클레오파트라의 정체성 연구 = A Study on the Identity of Cleopatra in Antony & Cleopatra

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Shakespeare’s Cleopatra represents the image of ‘whore’ and ‘witch’. Egypt representing ‘the other’ land of sensuality and witchcraft is an archetypal and unrealistic world unburdened by any historical mission. Antony standing at the crossroads of self-denial and self-indulgence, as well as of Rome and Egypt, loses his own identity and Roman value by Cleopatra’s seduction that relegates Antony’s manliness and soldiership with her charm. Antony, the emasculated hero, is defeated by Octavius Caesar who preserves the myth of Roman greatness. Cleopatra’s sexual conquest of Antony is connected to Antony’s political defeat by Caesar. Antony running away from Rome’s imperial project abandons his job serving for Rome because of his obsession with the love object.
Egypt is closely linked to femininity as Cleopatra is a woman who is also a nation, calling herself Egypt. Unlike Roman virtue of firmness, constancy and imperviousness, Cleopatra considers ‘heavenly mingle’ or ‘mobility’ and ‘changeability’ as the supreme values. Because of her ‘infinite variety’, Cleopatra’s femininity is regarded as negative and dangerous to practice subversion. The ideology of exclusion through which the Romans perceive the power relations and gender relations is repeatedly dismantled by Cleopatra. Cleopatra’s appropriation of Antony’s military and sexual power means the dissolution of gender boundaries which can be amplified to transgression of social order. Cleopatra brings about Roman fear that she contaminates their manhood with female attributes and makes havoc of the hierarchies by which Rome exists at all. Therefore her infinite variety negates the patriarchal discourse. As the patriarchal view of disobedient women intensifies the whore image of Cleopatra, she can not be free from the imperial threat and the discourse of white patriarchy.
Cleopatra’s infinite variety and theatricality are her capabilities to take control over Antony and Octavius Caesar. They form the power to subvert the patriarchal discourse.
It is through her majestic and queenly death that she breaks though the image of the other. By means of subversion of Roman paradigm of a whore or a gypsy, Cleopatra makes her suicide noble. While Antony dies not as a defeated soldier but as a desirous lover, Cleopatra thinks her death is the affirmation of her large self. Her desire for Antony rather affirms than threatens her identity of the Egyptian queen. Her luxurious ritual death in best attires mocks the Roman ideal of the stoic suicide. Finally she separates herself from the possibility of her representation. It proves that she is the unrepresentable woman and the unassimilable other. Cleopatra becomes a true winner over the Roman falsehood and pretension. Finally she is newly born as an eternal queen through her ceremonial theatricality.

목차 (Table of Contents)

• Ⅰ. 서론 = 1
• Ⅱ. 통치자로서의 클레오파트라 = 6
• Ⅲ. 연인으로서의 클레오파트라 = 22
• Ⅳ. 시간의 딸로서의 클레오파트라 = 39
• Ⅴ. 결론 = 53
• 참고문헌 = 57
• 영문초록 = 60