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This original and scholarly work uses three detailed case studies of plays - Shakespeare´s Antony and Cleopatra , King Lear and Cymbeline - to cast light on the ways in which early modern writers used metaphor to explore how identities emerge from the interaction of competing regional and spiritual topographies.

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Introduction: Metaphor and Social Subjectivity PART I: ALTERNATIVE CLEOPATRAS Renaissance Cleopatras English Cleopatra in the 1590s: The Queen´s Body Shakespeare´s Cleopatra PART II: KENT AND SYNECDOCHAL NATIVE IDENTITY Commonplace Kent Rebellious Kent: Historical Reiteration of Opposition Kent in Lear : Personification and Conflicted Identity PART III: ENGLISH CHRISTENDOM: METONYMY AND METALEPSIS Championing Christendom: Current Affairs, Romance and Epic Jacobean Christendom Cymbeline : On the Edge of Christendom Bibliography Index

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Shortlisted for the Shakespeare´s Globe First Book Award (2012).

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JANE PETTEGREE Teaching Assistant in the School of English at the University of St Andrews, UK. Her published works include ´Writing Christendom in the Renaissance´, in Europe and Its Others: Essays on Interperception and Identity (2010), and she is a regular contributor to the ABES online bibliography.

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