Shakespeare's Cross-Cultural Encounters - Hardcover

De Sousa, Geraldo U.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0333740165 ISBN 13: 9780333740163

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 1999

Synopsis

The dynamic interplay between three concepts - gender, text, habitat - as metaphors for cross-cultural definition in Shakespeare's drama is explored here. Shakespeare's reinterpretations of stage aliens such as Jews, Moors, Amazons and Gypsies are shown to be the means by which he interrogates a Eurocentric perspective and challenges the caricatures that cultured create of one another. Writing in an accessible, compelling style, de Sousa argues that when cultures that define themselves as ideological opposites meet, they intermingle in a process of negotiation and identity exchanges. Placing the drama in a historical and cultural context, he examines a variety of topics, including a clash of gender systems; text as a repository of a culture's values, beliefs, prejudices, and practices; erasure of memory and appropriation of identity; the interplay of ecology, culture, and race; and the dual process of cultural estrangement and reintegration. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, de Sousa relies on original archival research and draws on feminist and gender studies, ecology, history, and anthropology. In the process he recovers a wealth of information on race and gender relations in early modern Europe.

About this title

Review:

'vast cross-cultural scope...de Sousa's erudition is notable in every page of this fascinating work...A photographic treat with fourteen plates of rare engravings...Shakespeare's Cross-Cultural Encounters is the type of book that unsettles decades of interpretation of the canon which are infatuated with timeless and universal themes ...an invaluable source of aesthetic and ideological stimulation.' - Margarida Gandara Rauen, Shakespeare Quarterly

'many thought-provoking interpretative suggestions...in the process of comparing Shakespeare's with other constructions of alien culture, de Sousa introduces a spacious new world of early modern anthropological and ethnographic texts, often translated here for the first time, that will make all future discussions of this topic richer. - Meredith Ann Skura, Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900

Synopsis:

This text focuses on the cross-cultural experience, arguing that Shakespeare reinterprets, refashions, and reinscribes stage aliens such as Jews, Moors, Amazons, and gypsies and thus interrogates a Eurocentric perspective and the caricatures that cultures create of one another. A study of tragedies, comedies, romances, and histories, the book examines the interplay of three concepts gender, text, and habita as metaphors for cross cultural definition. The author recovers much information on race and gender relations in early modern Europe.;The book is aimed at departments of literature (courses in Shakespeare and Renaissance drama, cultural studies, gender studies, multicultural studies, British cultural history, ethnicity and race relations)

About this edition

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0333740165
• ISBN 13: 9780333740163
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 249