Transvestism and Patriarchal Social Structure in As You Like It: With a Study of EFL Implications in Taiwan’s Secondary Schools

• Main Authors: Mei-Ru Lai, 賴美儒
• Other Authors: Hui-Zung Perng
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2004
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/53312698350296170962

碩士 === 國立彰化師範大學 === 英語研究所 === 92 === My reading of William Shakespeare’s As You Like It is from the perspectives of Cultural Poetics and Materialist Feminism. I want to see the relation between Rosalind’s transvestism and patriarchal social structure. In addition, I propose to introduce Shakespeare into the language classroom of Taiwan’s secondary schools. Approaching the relation between the political struggles of the monarchy and the formation of the professional and commercial Elizabethan theaters, we can see that patriarchy is the major social ideology, with which the society was structured hierarchically. Although the rise of early capitalism might have effect on the social structure, patriarchy as the basis of social ideology had never been doubted and the social hierarchy had become far more stabilized than before. Introduction gives brief background knowledge of Cultural Poetics and Materialist Feminism, as well as the organization of the thesis. Chapter One shows how the political struggle between the Tudor monarchy and the Catholic Church was a major cause of the formation of the English theaters. Through analyzing the historical background of the theaters, we can find that Elizabethan society was patriarchal and hierarchical. Then in Chapter Two, applying Cultural Poetics and Materialist Feminism to Rosalind’s disguise in As You Like It, I argue that transvestism and female seemingly freedom are only strategies to consolidate the status quo of male hierarchy. In Chapter Three, I argue that, in As You Like It, the green world is actually a continuum of the primary world, in which patriarchy as ideology manipulates and controls the end of the play. Chapter Four is a proposal to bring William Shakespeare’s As You Like It into the language classroom of Taiwan’s secondary schools. Finally, a summary of the main points of my thesis and an emphasis again on the political implications and the benefit of the play to Taiwan’s secondary schools students is given in Conclusion.