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Illyria in Shakespeare’s England

Lea Puljcan Juric

Illyria in Shakespeare’s England is the first extended study of the eastern Adriatic region, often referred to in the Renaissance by its Graeco-Roman name “Illyria,” in early modern English writing and political thought. At first glance the absence of earlier studies may not be surprising: that area may seem significant only to critics pursuing certain specialized questions about Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which is set in Illyria. But in fact, it is not only often misrepresented in the discussions of that play but also typically ignored in the critical conversation on English prose romances, poems, and other plays that feature Illyria or its peoples, some rarely read, others well-known, including Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, 2 Henry VI, Measure for Measure, and Cymbeline. Lea Puljcan Juric explores the reasons for such views by engaging with larger questions of interest to many critics who focus on subjects other than geographic regions, such as “othering,” religion, race, and the development of national identity, among other issues. She also broadens the conversation on these familiar problems in the field to include the impact of post-Renaissance notions of the Balkans on the erasure of Illyria from Shakespeare studies.

Puljcan Juric studies the encounters of the English with the ancient and early modern Illyrians through their Greek and Roman heritage; geographies, histories, and travelogues, written in a variety of European polities including Illyria itself; religious conflict after the Reformation and the threat of Islam; and international politics and commerce. These considerations show how Illyria’s geopolitical position among the Ottoman Empire, Habsburg Empire and Venice, its “national” struggles as well as its cultural heterogeneity figured in English interests in the eastern Mediterranean, and informed English ideas about ethnicity, nationhood, and religion. In Shakespeare studies, however, critics have consistently cast Twelfth Night’s Illyria as a utopia, an enigma, or a substitute for England, Italy, or Greece. Arguing that twentieth-century politics and negative conceptions of the eastern Adriatic as part of “the Balkans” have underwritten this erasure of Illyria from our perspective on the field, Puljcan Juric shows how entrenched cultural hierarchies tied to elitism and colonial politics still inform our analyses of literature. She invites scholars to recognize that, for Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Illyria is the site of important socio-political and cultural struggles during the period, some shared with neighboring areas, others geographically specific, that invite dynamic historical and literary scrutiny.

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 368 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-68393-176-8 • Hardback • June 2019 • $133.00 • (£102.00)

978-1-68393-178-2 • Paperback • May 2021 • $45.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-68393-177-5 • eBook • June 2019 • $43.50 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Shakespeare, Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Criticism / Modern / 16th Century

Illyria in Shakespeare’s England

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Illyria in Shakespeare’s England is the first extended study of the eastern Adriatic region, often referred to in the Renaissance by its Graeco-Roman name “Illyria,” in early modern English writing and political thought. At first glance the absence of earlier studies may not be surprising: that area may seem significant only to critics pursuing certain specialized questions about Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, which is set in Illyria. But in fact, it is not only often misrepresented in the discussions of that play but also typically ignored in the critical conversation on English prose romances, poems, and other plays that feature Illyria or its peoples, some rarely read, others well-known, including Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, 2 Henry VI, Measure for Measure, and Cymbeline. Lea Puljcan Juric explores the reasons for such views by engaging with larger questions of interest to many critics who focus on subjects other than geographic regions, such as “othering,” religion, race, and the development of national identity, among other issues. She also broadens the conversation on these familiar problems in the field to include the impact of post-Renaissance notions of the Balkans on the erasure of Illyria from Shakespeare studies.

Puljcan Juric studies the encounters of the English with the ancient and early modern Illyrians through their Greek and Roman heritage; geographies, histories, and travelogues, written in a variety of European polities including Illyria itself; religious conflict after the Reformation and the threat of Islam; and international politics and commerce. These considerations show how Illyria’s geopolitical position among the Ottoman Empire, Habsburg Empire and Venice, its “national” struggles as well as its cultural heterogeneity figured in English interests in the eastern Mediterranean, and informed English ideas about ethnicity, nationhood, and religion. In Shakespeare studies, however, critics have consistently cast Twelfth Night’s Illyria as a utopia, an enigma, or a substitute for England, Italy, or Greece. Arguing that twentieth-century politics and negative conceptions of the eastern Adriatic as part of “the Balkans” have underwritten this erasure of Illyria from our perspective on the field, Puljcan Juric shows how entrenched cultural hierarchies tied to elitism and colonial politics still inform our analyses of literature. She invites scholars to recognize that, for Shakespeare and his contemporaries, Illyria is the site of important socio-political and cultural struggles during the period, some shared with neighboring areas, others geographically specific, that invite dynamic historical and literary scrutiny.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 368 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-68393-176-8 • Hardback • June 2019 • $133.00 • (£102.00)

978-1-68393-178-2 • Paperback • May 2021 • $45.99 • (£35.00)

978-1-68393-177-5 • eBook • June 2019 • $43.50 • (£35.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / Shakespeare, Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Literary Criticism / Modern / 16th Century

Author

Lea Puljcan Juric is lecturer in the Department of English at Fordham University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

List of Illustrations

Introduction: Illyria then and now

Chapter One: Reborn and reconfigured: Illyria in Renaissance cosmographies, 1570-1620

Chapter Two: Venturing in-between: Renaissance English travelers and merchants in the Eastern Adriatic

Chapter Three: Adriatic romance

Chapter Four: Forms of otherness in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night

Chapter Five: Rebellious Shakespeare: Illyrian unrest and the English ‘nation’

Coda

Appendix: Illustrations with commentary

Bibliography

About the Author

Reviews

Juric’s thorough coverage of previously unregarded sources leads us to her contention that the rendering of Illyria in Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night does not constitute a terra incognita on which the themes of “twinning, material and affective excess, gender performance, (self-) deception, and violence across the spectrum of social relations” are inscribed (177). Rather, these themes are endemic to representations of Illyria across genres.

— Sixteenth Century Journal

This book offers a sophisticated and informed history of the eastern coast of the Adriatic region; fresh, original insights into Shakespeare’s knowledge of the Mediterranean region; and original, incisive analyses of Shakespeare’s plays and other early modern texts. Juric also successfully links the development of an English national identity to Illyria as a location in flux—contained and not contained, real and imaginary.

— Renaissance Quarterly

Puljcan Juric's compelling Illyria in Shakespeare's England is a work of cultural historiography and literary criticism that models a new paradigm for early modern scholarship by advancing a cross-cultural, cross-linguistic, and comparative perspective. This books makes a significant contribution to Shakespeare criticism and to the study of the early modern Mediterranean.

— Renaissance and Reformation

A coastal region in the eastern Adriatic, Illyria looms large in Shakespeare’s plays. It serves as the setting for cross-dressing and drunken revels in Twelfth Night, a model for rebellion against Rome in Cymbeline, and a locus of piracy and lawlessness in a series of other plays. These invocations have long been dismissed as arbitrary touches of exoticism, but Puljcan Juric (Fordham Univ.) shows that in Shakespeare’s time Illyria was familiar, formidable, and linked with specific associations. Situated at the threshold between Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire, the region lay at the heart of a Mediterranean-centered world to which England was peripheral. It attracted admiration for reputed classical glory, heroic warriors, lavish hospitality, and its status as the birthplace of St. Jerome, but its uncertain and shifting borders prompted concerns about foreign threats, including barbarians, criminals, and sexual disorder. Building on the models of early modern English romances set in Illyria, Shakespeare turned to the region to negotiate erotic and political conflicts. This illuminating and deeply researched book makes an important contribution to understanding of Shakespeare’s imaginative engagement with the early modern world.

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.
— Choice Reviews

Illyria in Shakespeare’s England

Lea Puljcan Juric

Illyria in Shakespeare’s England

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