“Barrens” or “Heavens”: African Geography Imagination under Shakespeare’s Foreign Land Narratives

In Shakespeare’s foreign land narrative plays, Tunisia, Algiers, Morocco, and Mauritania, the four countries in northern and northwestern Africa, are portrayed as remote and barbaric places; Egypt and Ethiopia, two countries located in northeast Africa, are depicted as rich and mysterious countries full of oriental flavors. At the same time, Shakespeare’s plays lack depictions of central and southern African countries. Shakespeare’s imagination mechanism of African geography was influenced by factors such as traffic conditions, geographical landscapes, as well as mythological stories etc., reflecting the romantic imagination of early modern Europeans on the African continent. Such an African geographical imagination mechanism has promoted Europeans’ exploration of the unknown African world, accelerated the Western colonial process towards Africa, and enhanced Europeans’ awareness of their own geographical and cultural identity, allowing them to maintain their “Europeanness” while engaging in trade and cultural exchanges with Africans.