QUESTIONING ULYSSES: REPRESENTATIONS OF DISTORTED MYTHOLOGICAL SPACE IN TROILUS AND CRESSIDA AND CORIOLANUS
QUESTIONING ULYSSES: REPRESENTATIONS OF DISTORTED MYTHOLOGICAL SPACE IN TROILUS AND CRESSIDA AND CORIOLANUS

Summary/Abstract: This essay discusses the concepts of space and place from the geocritical perspective, as represented in two Shakespearean plays, Troilus and Cressida and Coriolanus. The mythological figure of Ulysses is represented differently in the two Shakespearean plays, through settings and characters, but mainly through the spatial dimension dramatized in each play. While in Troilus and Cressida Ulysses is a larger-than-life figure of reason and wisdom (but not the hero of the play), looming over the irrational world of the Trojan–Greek war, in Coriolanus the allusion to Ulysses comes from a feminine perspective, as an indirect allusion to Penelope, during Volumnia and Virgilia’s conversation on martial subjects. In both plays, however, the mythological space summoned by the figure of Ulysses and the connection to war paradoxically distorts traditional views about the Homeric hero and questions definitive statements about war.

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