PLACE, PUBLIC / PRIVATE SPACE AND TRAGIC MOVEMENT IN SHAKESPEARE’S ROMEO AND JULIET AND CHLOE GONG’S THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS
PLACE, PUBLIC / PRIVATE SPACE AND TRAGIC MOVEMENT IN SHAKESPEARE’S ROMEO AND JULIET AND CHLOE GONG’S THESE VIOLENT DELIGHTS

Summary/Abstract: This essay compares the poetics of place in Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet” and Chloe Gong’s “These Violent Delights”, focusing on how urban space shapes conflict, intimacy and fatal decision-making. Using a geocritical lens, the analysis contrasts Verona’s performative cityscape, streets, domestic interiors, religious refuges, exile routes and the tomb, with 1920s Shanghai, a divided metropolis marked by gang rule, foreign imperial presence and political turmoil. The study argues that both texts turn the city into an active agent: it produces surveillance, restricts mobility and makes private love structurally vulnerable. The comparison shows how the modern retelling re-frames Shakespearean spatial pressure through colonial fragmentation and urban violence.

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