“My Skin Is Not Me”: The Transformations of William Shakespeare’s Othello in Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) and Djanet Sears’s Harlem Duet

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-232
Author(s):  
Imed Sassi

Abstract Both Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet) (1990) and Harlem Duet (1997) are Canadian feminist appropriations of William Shakespeare. Both deal, at least partly, with Othello, and both can be considered subversive re-visions of Shakespeare’s play which aim to articulate oppositional intervention in the canon. These similarities notwithstanding, the plays have not often been studied concurrently. Also, while several critics have explored them, mostly separately, in terms of their adaptation/appropriation of Shakespeare, seeking to spell out the transformations they have brought to the “original” text, little has been said about how the iconic figure of Shakespeare still holds sway in these new dramas, albeit in different ways and to varying degrees. Likewise, their dramatization of the character of Othello remains rather understudied. This essay explores the “new” Othellos of the two plays, contending that their positioning in the two texts evinces some similarities while their characterization differs widely, given the plays’ generic difference, but mostly the two playwrights’ rather divergent feminist perspectives which, in turn, substantially shape the plays’ respective appropriation techniques.

1993 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 181-182
Author(s):  
William Shakespeare (book author) ◽  
Olga Zorzi Pugliese (review author)

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 49-55
Author(s):  
Kay Tepait Juanillo

Translation plays an important role in understanding different cultures and societies. Among the various kinds of translation, many scholars have debated the difficulty even impossibility of literary translation, especially Poetry. Translation of poetry requires the preservation of the specific aesthetic and expressive value when the work is transferred from the source language to the target language, which may be changed or altered after translating the work. This study discusses the different linguistic, cultural, and aesthetic issues in translating poetry. This study also discusses the translation issues in the Filipino translation of William Shakespeare�s Sonnet 18. The study shows the complications and sometimes impossibility in translating poetry as compared to other literary works like prose. This study is significant as it encourages experimental strategies that can show the uniqueness of translation as a linguistic and cultural practice.As a result, it can be concluded that the task of the translator is not to express what is to be conveyed but to find the intended effect upon the language into which she/he is translating in a way that leads to produce the echo of the original, even though it is impossible to be able to create a replica of the original text.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 182-199
Author(s):  
William David Green

For many, ‘Titus Andronicus’ exemplifies the extreme visual horror which characterises the subgenre of Elizabethan revenge tragedy. Long recognised as a collaboration between William Shakespeare and George Peele, the play’s notorious denouement – in which a Gothic queen is tricked into eating her slaughtered sons – has often been interpreted as a satire upon the revenge genre itself. Yet the nature of the play has recently been complicated by the claim that an additional banquet scene, only present in the 1623 Folio, may be a later addition written by a third dramatist, probably Thomas Middleton, and incorporated into the play sometime after 1616. This article will consider the implications of this probability further. It will explore how the author was not simply adding new material to ‘Titus Andronicus’ in order to provide a new selling point for a later revival of the work, but was constructing a new sequence designed to mirror and complement the already infamous cannibalistic conclusion of the original text. Understanding this scene as a later addition, we can now better understand how this additional scene serves as an integral turning point in the drama’s narrative, and is far less ‘disposable’ than previous critics have been equipped to realise.


2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 3-34
Author(s):  
Mirko Jurak

In the final part of my study I shall present Shakespeare's influence on Slovene dramatists from the 1930s to the present time. In this period an almost unbelievable growth in Slovene cultural activities took place. This is also reflected in a very large number of new Slovene playwrights who have written in this time, in their international orientation in dramatic art as well as in the constantly growing number of permanent (and ad hoc) theatre companies. Communication regarding new theatrical tendencies not only in Europe but also in the United States of America and % during the past decades % also in its global dimension has become much easiers than in previous periods and this resulted also in the application of new dramatic visions in playwriting and in theatrical productions in Slovenia. These new movements include new techniques in writing, such as symbolism, futurism, expressionism, constructivism, surrealism, political drama, the theatre of the absurd and postmodernism, which have become apparent both in new literary techniques and in new forms of production. In this period Classical drama still preserved an important role in major Slovene theatres. Plays written by Greek playwrights, as well as plays written by Shakespeare, Molière, Schiller etc. still constitute a very relevant part of the repertoire in Slovene theatres. Besides, Slovene theatres have also performed many plays written by modern playwrights, as for example by Oscar Wilde, L. N. Tolstoy, I. S. Turgenev, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, G. Hauptmann, G. Büchner, G. B. Shaw, A. P. Chekhov, John Galsworthy, Luigi Pirandello, Eugene O'Neill and many other contemporary playwrights. In the period after the Second World War the influence of American dramatists has been constantly growing. This variety also resulted in the fact that direct influence of Shakespeare and his plays upon Slovene dramatists became less frequent and less noticeable than it had been before. Plays written by Slovene dramatists are rarely inspired by whole scenes or passages from Shakespeare's plays, although there are also some exceptions from this rule. It is rather surprising how quickly Slovene theatres produced works written by important foreign dramatists already in the period following the First World War not to mention how quickly plays written by the best European and American playwrights have appeared on Slovene stages during the past fifty years. The connection between Shakespeare's plays and plays written by Slovene playwrights became more subtle, more sophisticated, they are often based on implied symbolic references, which have become a starting point for a new interpretation of the world, particularly if compared with the Renaissance humanistic values. The sheer number of plays written by Slovene dramatists in this period makes it difficult to ascertain that all influences from Shakespeare's plays have been noticed, although it is hoped that all major borrowings and allusion are included. Slovene dramatists and theatre directors have provided numerous adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, which sometimes present a new version of an old motif so that it may hardly be linked with Shakespeare. Slovene artists, playwrights and 4 also theatre directors, have %rewritten%, %reset% the original text and given it a new meaning and/or a new form, and in a combination of motifs and structure they have thus created a %new play%, even stand-up comedies in which the actor depends on a scenario based on Shakespeare's play(s) but every performance represents a new improvisation. Such productions are naturally closer to the commedia dell'arte type of play than to a play written by Shakespeare. I briefly mention such experimental productions in the introductory part of my study. The central part of my research deals with authors in whose works traces of Shakespeare's influence are clearly noticeable. These playwrights are: Matej Bor, Jože Javoršek, Ivan Mrak, Dominik Smole, Mirko Zupančič, Gregor Strniša, Veno Taufer, Dušan Jovanović, Vinko Möderndorfer and Evald Flisar.


2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert S. Miola

Throughout their careers both Jonson and Shakespeare often encountered Homer, who left a deep impress on their works. Jonson read Homer directly in Greek but Shakespeare did not, or if he did, he left no evidence of that reading in extant works. Both Jonson and Shakespeare encountered Homer indirectly in Latin recollections by Vergil, Horace, Ovid and others, in English translations, in handbooks and mythographies, in derivative poems and plays, in descendant traditions, and in plentiful allusions. Though their appropriations differ significantly, Jonson and Shakespeare both present comedic impersonations of Homeric scenes and figures – the parodic replay of the council of the gods (Iliad 1) in Poetaster (1601) 4.5 and the appearance of “sweet warman” Hector (5.2.659) in the Masque of the Nine Worthies (Love's Labor's Lost, 1588–97). Homer's Vulcan and Venus furnish positive depictions of love and marriage in The Haddington Masque (1608) as do his Hector and Andromache in Julius Caesar (1599), which features other significant recollections. Both Jonson and Shakespeare recall Homer to explore the dark side of honor and fame: Circe and Ate supply the anti-masque in the Masque of Queens (1609), and scenes from Chapman's Iliad supply the comical or tragical satire, Troilus and Cressida (c. 1601). Both poets put Homer to abstract and philosophical uses: Zeus's chain and Venus's ceston (girdle), allegorized, appears throughout Jonson's work and function as central symbols in Hymenaei (1606); Homer's depiction of the tension between fate and free will, between the omnipotent gods and willing humans, though mediated, inflects the language and action of Coriolanus (c. 1608). Ben Jonson and William Shakespeare practice a kind of inventive imitatio which, according to classical and neo-classical precept, re-reads classical texts in order to make them into something new.


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