Women in the English Drama of the Orient

• Název práce v češtině: Ženy v anglickém orientálním dramatu
• Název v anglickém jazyce: Women in the English Drama of the Orient
• Klíčová slova: orientální drama, hrdinky, Restaurační drama, Mary Pix, Delaviere Manley, Elkanah Setlle, William Davenant, stereotypy, orientalismus
• Klíčová slova anglicky: Drama of the Orient, heroines, Restoration drama, Mary Pix, Delaviere Manley, Elkanah Settle, William Davenant, stereotypes, Orientalism
• Akademický rok vypsání: 2014/2015
• Typ práce: bakalářská práce
• Jazyk práce: angličtina
• Ústav: Ústav anglofonních literatur a kultur (21-UALK)
• Vedoucí / školitel: PhDr. Soňa Nováková, CSc.
• Řešitel: skrytý - zadáno a potvrzeno stud. odd.
• Datum přihlášení: 03.09.2015
• Datum zadání: 03.09.2015
• Schválení administrátorem: zatím neschvalováno
• Datum potvrzení stud. oddělením: 09.09.2015
• Datum a čas obhajoby: 12.09.2016 08:30
• Datum odevzdání elektronické podoby: 08.08.2016
• Datum proběhlé obhajoby: 12.09.2016
• Odevzdaná/finalizovaná: odevzdaná studentem a finalizovaná
• Oponenti: Mgr. Klára Kolinská, Dr., Ph.D.

Zásady pro vypracování

My BA thesis will deal with the English drama of the earlyso-called “Oriental Renaissance.“ This movement was characterized by increased interest in the East that was reflected not only in travel literature but also in proseand drama.The Orient, as Said claims in his famous book Orientalism,wasa construction that enabled Europeanstodistinguish themselves from the East.Thus,theOrient becamea wayfor the Europeans to reestablish their own valuesby comparing them to the oriental “Other.” Thisfictitious“Other”most clearly manifests itself in theWestern idea of theorientalharem,which remainedinaccessible to male observersand thuseasily became a placeofWestern, especially male fantasies of the Orient.Thesituatingof the plot in what was considered the very heart of Eastern civilization andstrictly private feminine placenot only made women the focus point of these writings but alsoserved to highlight theWestern superiority over theoriental “Other,”both of which led to the “feminization” of the Orient.No wonder then that the oriental drama soon createdastrongly orientalized collection of stock characters, repeating plots and themes,full of intrigues, excessive violence and sensuality, where women were often diminished to the roles of mere sexual objects. Nevertheless, in my analysis of some of these plays I would like to argue that as stereotyped as these images of the female characters might be, they give us a deeper understanding of the English society of the time, criticizing or reinforcing the contemporary idea of women by dealing with the theme of female virtue and featuring such taboos as female sexuality and even what Joyce Zonana calls “feminist orientalism,”thatis a literary strategy thatby comparing Western and Easternpositions of womenstresses theimportance offemale individuality and libertyin the West.
In order to provemy thesis I plan to use four different tragedies withMiddle-Eastern settings, specifically Rhodes, Morocco, Colchis (present-day Georgia) and Turkey. All of these playswere written between 1661 and 1696 and might be considered some of the most representative examples of the genre. They include William Davenant´s The Siege of Rhodes, Elkanah Settle´s The Empress of Morocco, Delavier Manley´s The Royal Mischief and Mary Pix´s Ibrahim, the Thirteenth Emperour of the Turks. My choice of works was influenced by the fact that in all these plays female heroines are central to the text and yet they offer quite a wide range of examples of women´s roles as they were at this time established and which were still present in the English drama during the following 18^th century.
In my BA thesis I will focus on the role of women in the Oriental drama. In the individual chapters of the work I will cover three major themes. Firstly, I will focus on the issue of female sexuality, that is for example the defeminization of negative heroines or on the ambiguous reading of the character of Homais with its possible feminist connotations. Second chapter will deal with the representation of women as objects of men´s lust and the theme of female virtue, whereas the third chapter will be devoted to the question of feminism in these plays, focusing mostly on Davenant´s The Siege of Rhodes.

Seznam odborné literatury

Primary literature:
D´Avenant, Sir William. Love and Honour and The Siege of Rhodes. Ed. James W. Tupper.Boston: D. C. Heath&CO., 1909.Internet archive.
Manley, Delavier. The Royal Mischief, A Tragedy. As it is Acted by His Majesties Servants. London:Printed for R. Bentley, F. Saunders, and J. Knapton.1696.Literature Online.
Pix, Mary. Ibrahim, The Thirteenth Emperour of the Turks: A Tragedy. London:Printed for John Harding … and Richard Wilkin[etc.], 1696.Literature Online.
Settle, Elkanah. The Empress of Morocco. London:Printed for William Cademan, 1673.Literature Online.

Secondary literature:
Allard, James Robert, and Mathew R. Martin, eds. Staging Pain, 1580 – 1800: Violance and Trauma in British Theater. Farnham: Ashagate Publishing Ltd., 1988.
Andrea, Bernadette. Women and Islam in Early Modern English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
Aravamudan, Srinivas. Enlightenment Orientalism: Resisting the Rise of the Novel. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2012.
Ballaster, Ros. Fabulous Orient: Fiction of the East in England 1662 – 1785. Oxford: Oxford University Press Inc., 2005.
Ballaster, Ros. Ed. The History of British Women´s Writing 1690 – 1750. Vol. 4. London: Palgrave MacMillian, 2010.
Birchwood, Matthew. Staging Islam in England Drama and Culture 1640- 1685. Cambridge:Boydel& Brewer, 2007.
Brown, F. C.. Elkanah Settle: His Life and Works. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1910.
Cambell, Killis.“The Sources of Davenant´s The Siege of Rhodes.” Modern Language Notes. The Johns Hopkins University Press 13. 6 (1898):177 – 182.JSTOR.
Cuder- Domínguez, Pilar. Stuart Women Playwrights, 1613 – 1713. Farnham:Ashagate Publishing Ltd.,2011.
Engel, Laura, and Elaine M. McGirr, eds. Stage Mothers: Women, Work and the Theater, 1660 – 1830. Lanham:Bucknell University Press, 2014.
Greenfield, Anne. “When Sultan Becomes Rapist: The Politics of Rape in Orientalist Tragedy.“Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research 21. 2 (2006) Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research 21. 2 (2006)59 – 73.Literature Online.
Hoeveler, Diane Long, and Jeffrey Cass, eds. Interrogating Orientalism: Contextual Approaches and Pedagogical Practices. Columbus:The Ohio State University, 2006.
Hollis-Berry, Elizabeth. "'No Party favour'd, no Designs in view': Female Rakes and Heroes, Politics and Power in Delarivier Manley's Heroic Drama" Lumen: Selected Proceedings from the Canadian Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies. Society by Academic Printing and Pub19 (2000), 171 – 186.Erudit.
Hughes, Derek. gen. ed. The Eighteenth Century Women Playwrights. London:Pickering & Chatto, 2001.
Krueger, Misty. “'Rouse up yourself and bear you like a Man': Masculine Anxiety and the Body in DelaviereManley´s The Royal Mischief.“ Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research 21. 2 (2006) Restoration and 18th Century Theatre Research 21. 2 (2006)40 – 58.Literature Online.
Lewis, Reina. Gendering Orientalism: Race, Feminity and Representation. London: Routledge, 1996.
Lewis, Reina. Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Ottoman Harem. London: I.B. Tauris & Co Ltd., 2004.
Lowenthal, Cynthia. “Portraits and Spectators in the Late Restoration Playhouse: Delaviere Manley´s Royal Mischief.“ The Eighteenth Century 35 (1994): 119 – 34.JSTOR.
Quinsley, Katherine M.. Ed. Broken Boundaries: Women and Feminism in Restoration Drama. Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996.
Rubik, Margarette. “'My life, my soul, my all is fixed upon enjoyment.'” The Unabashed Expression of Female Desire in The Royal Mischief.” Gramma 4 (1996): 165 – 79. Google scholar.
Said, Edward. Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient. New York:Random House, Inc., 1979.
Schwab, Raymond. The Oriental Renaissance: Europe´s Rediscovery of India and the East, 1680 – 1880. Translated byGene Patterson – Blackand Victor Reinking.New York:Columbia University Press, 1984.
Weber, Charlotte. “Unveiling Scheherazade: Feminist Orientalism in the International Alliance of Women, 1911 – 1950.“ Feminist Studies. College Park. 27. 1 (2001): 125 – 34. Literature Online.
Yeğenoğlu, Meyda. Colonial Fantasies: Towards a Feminist Reading of Orientalism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.
Zonana, Joyce. “The Sultan and the Slave: Feminist Orientalism and the Structure of'Jane Eyre'”The University of Chicago Press18. 3 (1993):592 – 617.JSTOR.