The Cosmic Topos In Shakespeare’s Tragedies

In the Renaissance Britain, a large number of excellent and world-famous poets emerged like the bright stars in the sky of poetry. They extracted a lot of multiple and magnificent cosmic images from the cosmic view in their own time, namely “Pythagorean-Ptolemaic cosmology” or “Aristotelian-Ptolemaic cosmology”, to construct the content, form, theme and structure of poet, which endowed their poems with rich connotation and profound meaning. Undoubtedly, Shakespeare is one of the most shining stars in the sky of Renaissance poetry. A large number of cosmic images are used in his poetic drama, especially tragedy, such as the celestial bodies represented by the sun, weather represented by the storm, and the garden represented by plants. In this thesis, I will analyze the cosmic images in Romeo and Juliet, Julius Caesar and King Lear, and the analogy between macrocosm and microcosm, thus to explore the concept of correspondence between universe and human in Shakespeare’s tragedies. This thesis consists of three parts:The first chapter focuses on the celestial bodies represented by the sun, including the seven planets, stars and meteors, etc. The Elizabethans believed that the celestial bodies in the sky dominated man’s fate. In Shakespeare’s tragedies, a series of astronomical phenomena in the superlunary, such as solar eclipse, lunar eclipse, and the meteor, predict the chaos caused by the loss of order in the sublunary. It indicates that the fight among people, especially the persons in high position would cause tragedies to themselves, even their families and the society.The second chapter focuses on the weather images represented by the storm in Shakespeare’s tragedies. According to traditional cosmology, the weather changes are caused by interaction among the four elements—water, fire, air, earth in the great cosmos. Correspondingly, the emotional changes of human—the small cosmos, are caused by the interaction among the four humors in human body. So, the storm symbolizes the emotional fight in human’s inner world. It is the strong passions, particularly rage, fear and desire, that dominate the characters’ actions, thus to push forward the progress of tragedy’s plot.The third chapter focuses on the garden image represented by plants. In traditional cosmology, poets regard plants as the symbol of human body. Just like flowers and grasses could not escape reaping by scythe, human could not get away from time’s erosion and have to undergo a circle from birth to death, which is the law of the universe. Therefore, the plants’ growth, maturity and death correspond with man’s process of life, embodying the transient and mortality of man’s life.In conclusion, Shakespeare’s use of the cosmic images reflects the correspondence between universe and man in the Renaissance. By understanding the relationship between great universe and small universe-man, people try to explore the essence of man. Man, between heaven and hell, is the center of the universe, and is granted both divinity and bestiality by God. Only by the pursuit of love and ration, can people control their own desires and get self-salvation, which reflects the spirit of humanism such as the strong pursuit of knowledge, self education and self exploration during the Renaissance.