Description: Shakespeare was an astute observer of contemporary life, culture, and politics. The emerging practice of territory as a political concept and technology did not elude his attention. In Shakespearean Territories, Stuart Elden reveals just how much Shakespeare's unique historical position and political understanding can teach us about territory. Shakespeare dramatized a world of technological advances in measuring, navigation, cartography, and surveying, and his plays open up important ways of thinking about strategy, economy, the law, and colonialism, providing critical insight into a significant juncture in history. Shakespeare's plays explore many territorial themes: from the division of the kingdom in King Lear, to the relations among Denmark, Norway, and Poland in Hamlet, to questions of disputed land and the politics of banishment in Richard II. Elden traces how Shakespeare developed a nuanced understanding of the complicated concept and practice of territory and, more broadly, the political-geographical relations between people, power, and place. A meticulously researched study of over a dozen classic plays, Shakespearean Territories will provide new insights for geographers, political theorists, and Shakespearean scholars alike.
Brief description: Stuart Elden (PhD, University of London, 1999) is professor of political theory and geography at the University of Warwick. He is the author of The Birth of Territory, which we published in 2013, and Shakespearean Territories, which we published in 2018, along with numerous other works including Terror and Territory: The Spatial Extent of Sovereignty (Minnesota, 2009), and a four-volume intellectual history of Michel Foucault's career.
Review Quotes: "Elden's original contribution lies in illuminating the importance of territory to the legitimization of sovereignty by carefully exploring the world of Shakespeare's plays...Elden sheds light on the unique position of Shakespearean theater 'at a significant historical juncture.'"-- "Journal of the History of Ideas"