Shakespeare’s Italian plays as agents of acculturation in the context of cultural dialogue
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.28925/2311-259x.2025.3.1Keywords:
Shakespeare, Italian plays, acculturation, Renaissance, imagology, cultural dialogue, primary source, commedia dell’arteAbstract
The subject of the study is the specificity of the representation of Italian material in William Shakespeare's works with the aim of clarifying the nature of its influence on the collective perceptions of the English at the end of the 16th and beginning of the 17th centuries about Italy and its inhabitants. The study surveys the current state of scholarship on the wide-ranging issues associated with the acculturation of the Italian cultural segment in Renaissance England, while identifying research lacunae—among them Shakespeare’s role in addressing the so-called imagological paradox. The study is based on the methodology of new Historicism.
As the result of the study, the authors distinguish three levels at which Italian material is manifested within the Shakespearean canon. The first is the explicit topographical marking of space as Italian, a feature consistently present in all eleven of Shakespeare’s Italian plays. The second level concerns the contact-genetic relationship with Italian literary works that served as narrative or thematic sources. The third level reflects a multifaceted assimilation of Italian comic traditions, particularly in Shakespeare’s adaptation of techniques of intrigue, comic stereotypes and role types, as well as the lighthearted, playful atmosphere characteristic of the commedia dell’arte.
The findings suggest that Shakespeare, through his original reinterpretations of Italian material, emerges as a crucial agent in the formation of cultural stereotypes and plays a central role in the processes of acculturation in the British Isles during the Renaissance. The popularity of Shakespeare’s Italian plays among contemporary audiences had a tangible impact on the worldview of English society. Literature and the arts, and above all—the works of one of the era’s most celebrated dramatists, shaped enduring cultural representations of Italy as a land of beauty, love, amorous intrigue, romantic adventure, and the passionate southern temperament of its inhabitants, inclined toward life’s pleasures and witty jesting.
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