The liminality of the garden: A comparative study of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and Tang Xianzu's The Peony Pavilion

This article explores the liminality of the garden through a comparative study of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet and a coeval Chinese play, The Peony Pavilion ( mŭ dān tíng, 牡丹亭, 1598) by Tang Xianzu (汤显祖). It studies the garden as a liminal space between art and nature as well as between dream and reality: an exploration of plant symbolism and allegory in English and Chinese cultures indicates how the garden has been eroticised and politicised in the human imagination. It adopts a cross-cultural perspective, aiming to shed light on the undiscovered aspects in previous parallel studies of each play.