The ‘(De)territorialising’ power of Cleopatra's barge: Plutarch, Shakespeare, and Mankiewicz

Abstract

Taking into account the versions by Plutarch, Shakespeare, and Mankiewicz, this article focuses on Cleopatra's force of attraction and capacity to travel by water, thus crossing geopolitical, cultural, and emotional frontiers. It presents her barge as a metonymical ‘territory’ in a transitional space and examines its power of seduction and symbolism at political, spectacular, and mythical levels. It takes up the issue of Antony's de-Romanisation, inviting a parallel between the queen's barge and the ship of fools. It extends the analysis to variants of the royal barge as part of a territorialising/deterritorialising dynamic: the Egyptian flagship and her funeral-boat-like tomb.