Visions of Cyprus on the early Modern English Stage, 1570-1630

Abstract

Although it was geographically remote, references to Cyprus were surprisingly prevalent in early modern English culture. The island featured in a remarkably diverse range of texts, including historiography, travel writing, popular romance, classical mythology, Protestant theology and topical news pamphlets; this list is by no means exhaustive. The island’s cultural prominence stems largely from its liminal position on the border between the Latin Christian west and the Islamic east. The island was at various points in its history a crusader kingdom, the last Christian staging post on the main pilgrimage route from Western Europe to the Holy Land and an important mercantile centre through which much east-west trade flowed. For a brief period, its main port, Famagusta, was one of the richest cities in Christendom. Memories of its historical significance were often preserved in popular literature, leading to the emergence of a number of themes, tropes and motifs associated with the island and its people, to which further affiliations were added when classical texts were translated into English in the second half of the sixteenth century. Cyprus was brought sensationally further into focus when the island was invaded by the Ottomans in 1571, culminating in an act of spectacular and grotesque violence that resonated in the English imaginary for decades to come.
It is this annexation of Cyprus that has been granted most attention in recent New Historicist criticism concerning the island’s representation on the early modern English stage. Exploring the ways in which the island was envisaged across four dramatic works, this thesis aims to demonstrate that the events of 1571, although influential, did not erase the other tropes and motifs associated with the island, instead adding to the complex range of associations available to dramatists. Through attention to each of these works’ intertextual negotiations, I aim to uncover a far more complex picture of what Cyprus ‘meant’ in both the texts discussed here and in the wider English imaginary, offering readings of these dramas that are responsive to the literary as well as the historical influences shaping the island’s cultural representation.

Date of Award	9 May 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bristol
Sponsors	SWW Doctoral Training Partnership Panel
Supervisor	Laurence J W Publicover (Supervisor) & Mark Hutchings (Supervisor)