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English Language and Literature Commons

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Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Selected Works

Ruben Espinosa

2014

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in English Language and Literature

Fluellen’S Foreign Influence And The Ill Neighborhood Of King Henry V, Ruben Espinosa Dec 2013

Fluellen’S Foreign Influence And The Ill Neighborhood Of King Henry V, Ruben Espinosa

Ruben Espinosa

This essay considers Shakespeare’s attention to Fluellen’s foreignness in King Henry V amid the play’s exploration of a nebulous cultural/national English identity, and it argues that the play’s emphasis on cultural and religious difference serves to underscore Elizabethan England’s tenuous sense of self. The imagined English fellowship under God that Henry evokes is at odds with the divided community at the margins of his play and the fractured identity of Shakespeare’s own England. Through Fluellen, then, difference is marked as concurrently strange and surprisingly stable.


Shakespeare And Immigration, Ruben Espinosa, David Ruiter Dec 2013

Shakespeare And Immigration, Ruben Espinosa, David Ruiter

Ruben Espinosa

The essays in this collection examine the role of, and reaction to, the issue of immigration in Shakespeare’s drama and culture. This volume not only seeks to interrogate how the massive influx of immigrants during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I influenced perceptions of English identity, and gave rise to anxieties about homeland security in early modern England, but they also aim to understand how our current concerns surrounding immigration shape our perception of the role of the alien in Shakespeare’s work and expand the texts in new and relevant directions to a contemporary audience.