summary writing

V. Writing (20 points)

Directions: Read the following article and then write a brief summary of it in a good and academic style of English. Write your summary in the proper space on Answer Sheet II.

Mapping Woman and Mapping the Body

Paige Newmark

Before venturing any farther into the drama, I shall present some background on the new cartographic culture that made possible the appearance of maps onstage. This will provide a broad cultural framework within which I shall discuss the plays of Shakespeare and some of his contemporaries. How did mapping the body become important? In Shakespeare‘s England, interestin maps of the world, and in particular Britain, burgeoned (萌芽) at an exponential rate. In the latter half of the fifteenth century only a dozen maps of England existed; by the first half of the sixteenth century the number had grown to two hundred, while in the second part of the sixteenth century - in other words when Shakespeare was alive - there was an increase to nearly eight hundred maps of Britain and its various parts. The explosive development in cartography stemmed (滋生) from a wider cultural wonder of the Renaissance, the printing press. With its ability to regularly print 1,000 to 1,500 copies at a time, printing meant that a wider dissemination and more extensive use of maps were made feasible.

This unprecedented rise in map production heralded (宣告) a new cartographic awareness. Two sets of maps in particular proved to be highly influential: one was Christopher Saxton‘s Counties of England and Wales, which was an atlas published in 1579, when Shakespeare was fifteen years old. The book not only contained separate county maps, but also contained a map of the whole of Britain or Anglia (英伦). The other set of maps is Ortelius‘ Theatrum Orbis Terrarum(《寰宇概观》),which was published in forty-five successive editions between 1570 and 1624. Extrapolating from these numbers, we can see that tens of thousands of copies for each map were produced, which became so accessible that they started to pervade all aspects of society. They were such ubiquitous(普遍存在)objects that they became essential tools of government: whether used for local administration or to shape national consciousness.

If we look at Saxton‘s maps, one of the first things to notice is that there were no roads on them. This indicates that they were obviously not meant for getting from one location to another, which in turn begs the question: why were they made? On looking at all of the county maps, an interesting feature starts to emerge: there is a recurrent, even systematic, presence of

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Queen Elizabeth. The first place that Elizabeth‘s image dominates is at the very beginning of the atlas on the frontispiece. Secondly, we see that symbols of her presence govern each individual map. Nearly every county promoted her royal hegemony(集权): for example if we look at Cornwall, her Royal Coat of arms (皇家盾徽)is both large and prominent, and therefore a strong assertion that the land is hers and hers alone. Within a short time span, evidence shows that other maps propagated Elizabeth‘s image as the one and only ruler. For example, John Case‘s image of Elizabeth embracing the ―sphere of the state‖ in 1588, shows how a celestial (神圣) map could be used as an allegory of the benefits of the queen‘s rule, and even her godlike aspirations.

Two years later the cartographer Hondius produced his Angliae which prominently displayed a genealogical (谱系) table and a portrait of Elizabeth. The correlation of the Queen and her descent from William the Conqueror is visible in the top right of the frame, which reflects Elizabeth‘s strong assertion of her long-standing claim to the throne. Her ostentatious (矫揉造作) alignment with William the Conqueror suggests that she was unsure of her right to the monarchy; another map by Hondius was entitled Typus Angliae (1592), also depicted a strong central image of Queen Elizabeth. Her conspicuous placement over Scotland is a clear indicator of her questionable claims to the country north of the border. What we are witnessing is a nascent (初生的) fusion in imagery between woman and cartography, or in simpler terms, the combination of ?woman appearing in a map.‘ This particular fusion finds its iconographic relevance, when we notice that the same merging proliferates in Europe, at exactly the same time. The woman-as-map appears many times in quick succession from Heinrich Bunting‘s mapin 1581, to the image from Munster‘s Cosmography in 1588, and Jacobus Francus‘s Europa in 1598. Although each representation is simply a variation on the same theme, the correlation of the map and the Queen has taken a leap from the English counterparts. The difference with the continental examples is twofold: first, where the English models merely suggest a link between woman and maps, the European versions explicitly personify the map as a woman. Secondly, the map renders Europe in the form of a virgin.

Earlier I mentioned that the two most prolific and highly influential maps of their day were Saxton and Ortelius. Where the English Saxton depicts a picture of the virgin Queen on the frontispiece (卷首) of his map book, Ortelius makes the decision to depict personifications of all four continents as virgins on the frontispiece of his Theatrum Orbis Terrarum. Europa is given the most prominent position looking down from her pedestal; Africa on the right and Asia on the left are presenting tributes (殷勤) to her, while America

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reclines below. The same concept of depicting female virgin personifications also occurs in Mercator‘s popular Atlas. Two points emerge from these images: the first is that there is a discernible movement from rendering the Queen and her country, to the Queen as her country. The second point that all these examples clearly illustrate is how much maps of the period exhibit a strong bias, as feminized (女性化) landscape.

Soon a parallel enterprise developed in the world of art: as well as having strong iconic (肖像) images of the Queen-on-a-map, we start to have maps on the queen appearing in paintings. In particular there are three portraits of Elizabeth that are ichnographically very revealing. The first is Ketel‘s so-called ―Sieve‖ portrait (筛子画), which was painted only one year after Saxton‘s maps were published. Situated behind the dominant image of the Queen, is a globe of the world. Eight years later the ―Armada‖ portrait was painted. This sets Queen Elizabeth in front of two paintings within the composition. The first has the Spanish Armada (西班牙无敌舰队) being repelled (击败) by English fire ships, while the second has the Armada leaving, broken and defeated, in a storm-tossed sea. What is relevant for our purposes is the foreground of the painting. Here the Queen sits crowned on a throne with her hand on a globe, which conveys that the crown, the Queen, and her throne have repelled the invading Spanish. Of most interest to us, is that the Queen‘s touch lends greater prominence, and therefore greater iconographic value to the cartographic image. Even more important is that her hand is resting on the globe, thereby signifying that she is holding the whole world, as if it is now hers to own.

Finally, Gheeraerts the Younger painted the ―Ditchley‖ portrait from 1590-92; this positions Queen Elizabeth as standing on a globe of the world, and more particularly on a map of England. It is apparent that the map is no longer a peripheral (次要) signifier, but has become the central image in the picture. If we view the three portraits in chronological order, we can see that there is a discernible movement of the cartographic image from the background to the foreground. Equally, the idea of maps is advancing to the forefront of people‘s consciousness, and Elizabeth‘s arsenal of political pre-eminence. Arguably Elizabeth created a fashion for pictures containing maps – though a minor one.

In a nutshell mapping the land correlates with mapping the female body in Renaissance Europe and England.

IV. Translation(20points):

Directions: The following is the Chinese abstract of an academic paper. Read it and then translate it into English in a good and academic style. Write your English version in the proper

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