Thomas Middleton's dramatic social spaces

Regis Augustus Bars Closel

doi:10.22409/gragoata.v29i63.59034.en

Authors

Regis Augustus Bars Closel Universidade Federal de Santa Maria https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9342-5109

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.22409/gragoata.v29i63.59034.en

Keywords:

Thomas Middleton, City comedies, Jacobean Drama, Spatial Studies

Abstract

This article argues that Middleton’s city plays offer a different insight into the logics of the land-related relationships. Land and the social space it generates is a catalyst that drives the action and sets a city’s “stereotypical forces” in motion, an impulse prior to the promises of courtship and exchange of wealth. Therefore, land works simultaneously as a passive commodity as well as an active centre for competing and conflicting interests. Focusing on The Phoenix and (1603-4) No Wit/Help Like a Woman’s (1611) and relying on Henri Lefebvre’s (1991) spatial concepts, I explore the relationship between women and the economics of the social space.

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