國立中山大學 National Sun Yat-Sen University Department of Foreign Languages and Literature Doctoral Dissertation
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
⊕ 國立中山大學 National Sun Yat-sen University Department of Foreign Languages and Literature Doctoral Dissertation The Evolving Gypsy Image and the Romani People in the Western Imagination Christopher James O’Brien ( 歐書華) Advisor: Professor Rudolphus Teeuwen June 2007 Acknowledgments First and foremost, I wish to thank my advisor, Dr. Rudolphus Teeuwen, for his constant support and encouragement during this long and—for both of us—unprecedented process of researching and writing such an unusual dissertation. I want to also thank Dr. Shu-Fang Lai, during whose class on Victorian fiction I first was encouraged to learn about Gypsy fortune-tellers in fiction. The other members of my Dissertation Committee have all been most kind and helpful, as well, and their insights proved very valuable and appreciated. Thanks, too, to Rosa and the other kind members of the Foreign Languages Department at NSYSU. My family members, on both sides of the ocean, have all been extremely patient and helpful as well. I want to thank my parents in particular for sending me key books that were practically unavailable in Taiwan. My beloved wife Amy and my precious daughters Coral and Éowyn provided me with the quiet time for privacy my mind needed, as well as the daily love and hugs that my heart required. Without these blessings from above, I could never have even reached a full draft of this project. All of the writers and artists whose works I have studied have helped me to grow as a writer and to mature intellectually, and I am duly grateful. I wish to dedicate this dissertation to those of the Romani and gad źé community who are trying to help the world to respect the dignity and heritage of the honorable and well-intentioned members of the Romani people, and I hope that what I have learned will help them in some way to achieve their goals and mine. I have two in mind in particular. First, I strongly hope that our shared goal—that the Western world may soon be able to distinguish between the Romanies and the false Gypsy image, and to cherish them both as they truly are—will be achieved in my own lifetime. And second, I hope that that the Romanies may be able to find peace and hope in their hoped-for future roles as equal members of the world community of ethnicities, retaining their sense of self identity but recognizing that all of those members, including themselves, are part of a family of interdependent humans, among whom each member is seen as valued and appreciated. Table of Contents TABLE OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................................................... VIII A NOTE ON TERMINOLOGY ............................................................................................................................. IX CHAPTER 1 . THE IMAGINARY “GYPSY” ...................................................................................................1 PURPOSES OF THE STUDY .................................................................................................................................6 THE IMAGINARY GYPSY .................................................................................................................................12 Essential Attributes of the Stereotypical Gypsy Image................................................................................17 The Romanies on Paper: The Representers and their Orientations............................................................19 Playing With the Image: The Stereotype as a Creative Device...................................................................21 The Gypsy as the Other: Romanies Punished for Projected Crimes...........................................................24 THE BIRTH OF A STEREOTYPE ........................................................................................................................27 Phase One: The Mysterious Early History of the Romanies.......................................................................27 Phase Two: The Grand Entrance, 1417: The Roma’s First Impression on Western Europe .....................33 Phase Three: From First Impression to Stereotype: Specific Traits of Gypsies Established by 1500........39 Notes ........................................................................................................................................................................43 CHAPTER 2. THE GYPSY FIGURE IN RENAISSANCE LITERATURE 1521-1653 ..............................44 THE REBIRTH OF THE GYPSY IMAGE : THE CHARACTER UNDER NEW DIRECTION .....................................44 LITERARY GYPSY FIGURES IN THE 1500 S ......................................................................................................45 The Gypsy Wanders on Stage: Three Sixteenth Century Dramas...............................................................45 Farsa das Ciganas (1521), by Gil Vicente ..............................................................................................................46 Misogonus (ca. 1560), Anonymous..........................................................................................................................47 Promos and Cassandra (1578), by George Whetstone............................................................................................48 Elements of the Gypsy Image as Manifested on the Sixteenth-Century Stage.............................................50 THE GALAPAGOS OF GENIUS : SHAKESPEARE AND CERVANTES , AHEAD OF THEIR TIME ..........................57 Gypsy References in Shakespeare...............................................................................................................58 Romeo and Juliet (1595)..........................................................................................................................................60 Antony and Cleopatra (1607)...................................................................................................................................62 The Disremembered Archetype: Los Gitános in “La Gitanilla” ................................................................65 THE REFINEMENT OF THE STANDARD GYPSY IMAGE : THREE JACOBEAN PLAYS .......................................86 Influx and Influences...................................................................................................................................86 The Jacobean Scripts ..................................................................................................................................88 v More Dissemblers Besides Women (1615), by Thomas Middleton..........................................................................88 The Gypsies Metamorphosed (1621), by Ben Jonson ..............................................................................................89 The Spanish Gipsie (1623), by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley .................................................................92 The Image as Established in the Early Seventeenth Century: The First Plateau........................................93 Notes ........................................................................................................................................................................96 CHAPTER 3. GEORGE BORROW’S REVIVAL OF THE GYPSY IMAGE IN THE 1800S...................98 MARKING TIME : THE GYPSY IMAGE IN THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES ....................101 Routine Persecution; Romany Tenacity ....................................................................................................101 The Literary Gypsy in Stasis .....................................................................................................................106 Continuity and Adaptation in Portrayals of Gypsies ................................................................................107 THE GYPSY IMAGE : STIRRINGS OF CHANGE ...............................................................................................110 An Artistic Split in the Gypsy Image: 1807-1834......................................................................................113 The Gypsy as Metaphor .........................................................................................................................................114 Upholding the Status Quo ......................................................................................................................................117 Continuations of the Enlightenment-Era Gypsy Figures in the Middle and Late 1800s...........................119 GEORGE HENRY BORROW’S ROLE IN THE REVISION OF THE GYPSY IMAGE , 1841-1874 .........................125 Borrow’s Update of the Traditional Gypsy Image: Examination and Evaluation....................................129 Forging Links Between “La Gitanilla” and Borrow’s Experience of Spain’s Romanies .......................................133 Borrow’s Accounts of the Romanies: Reliability Issues and their Effect on the Image ............................137 Correcting Stereotypes; Reinforcing Stereotypes: Borrow’s Gypsy Generalities ..................................................145 Internal Inconsistencies in Borrow’s Writing ........................................................................................................147 Borrow and the Synecdochic Fallacy: Spain .........................................................................................................149 Borrow and the Synecdochic Fallacy: England and Elsewhere .............................................................................151