Power struggle in Shakespeare's Roman tragedies: Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar

Abstract

This dissertation aims to study power struggle in Shakespeare's Roman tragedies Coriolanus, Antony and Cleopatra and Julius Caesar. The study employs a method of critical discourse analysis and borrows its terminology from the science of politics using the theories of New Historicism, Cultural Materialism and Orientalism in a way that compares the fictional world of Shakespeare to the actual political arena of the contemporary world. These points of comparison or analogy can provide the contemporary addressee with invaluable insights into the nature of political structure and universal/untimely power relations. The study therefore argues that power struggle in Shakespeare's Roman tragedies can be analyzed in terms of some political concepts. First, in Coriolanus, stern, conservative and humiliating discourse of the ruling class towards people and discourse showing social resistance against the Roman political and economic system foreground a social demand for "economic egalitarianism" that is believed to bring about political freedom with itself and to undermine "authoritarianism and elitism". Accordingly, noncompliant and unconventional military discourse reveals that military success is bound to be transformed into political success that is associated with "militarism and military tutelage". Secondly, in Antony and Cleopatra, the study uses the concept of "orientalism" to analyze how the very discourse itself can have an influence upon the political relations and uncovers the Roman oriental discourse against the East, which is associated with "latent orientalism," "manifest orientalism" and "self and the other" (Said: 1981). Thirdly, in Julius Caesar, the study exploits the terms " agitation propaganda," "perception management," and "deep state operation" so as to produce a prospective perception and foreshadowing suspicion that leads to the assassination of a would-be dictator.