『안토니와 클레오파트라』: 사랑의 비극에 나타난 사랑의 담론과 여성의 주체성

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In the love tragedies male friendship and its attendant attitudes toward females take on a progressively greater destructive potential in opposition to heterosexual relationships. The multiple possibilities of comedy are replaced by the limited option of tragedy. Whereas both homosocial and heterosexual bonding may occur in comedy, tragedy demands a choice on the part of the male protagonist between the two. In Romeo and Juliet, Mercutio's casualness and flippancy about sexuality and love, like that of the antiromantics of the comedies, are perhaps defenses against the threat of unhappy love; moreover, as foils to Romeo's romanticism. And in Antony and Cleopatra, the misogyny that is epitomized by Philo and Octavius and the discursive practice of Orientalism conflate, constituting the Roman ideology that dominates the entire known western world.
As critics have responded to the play, Rome has traditionally been the winner in the implicit contest between Roman and Egyptian values. Many critics have judged Cleopatra a manipulative and self-serving temptress or femme fatale; some have endorsed the enraged Antony's charge that she is a whore (4.12.15). But recent critical paradigms have made it possible to view the play through more or less Egyptian eyes, celebrating the feminine values exemplified by Cleopatra and the realm in which she reigns. The positive valuation the recent critics give to Cleopatra signals a breakdown of the opposition between Rome and Egypt. Contemporary thinkers show that the either/or logic of binarism is itself a typically "Roman" pattern. This paper shows the way Cleopaatra's "infinite variety" (2.2.277) deconstructs an oppositional logic and explains why her femininity is not the logical opposite of Antony's masculinity but a disruptive counterpart that throws gender norms into question. Understood in these terms, Egypt does not so much contrast with Rome as reveal the limitations of Roman rule.