Shakespeare's Cross-Cultural Encounters

Geraldo U. De Sousa

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9780333740163
• eBook ISBN:
  9780230286658
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: European Literary Criticism
• Index: Social Sciences

In this highly entertaining study, De Sousa argues that Shakespeare reinterprets, refashions and reinscribes his alien characters - Jews, Moors, Amazons and gypsies. In this way, the dramatist questions the narrowness of a European perspective which caricatures other societies and views them with suspicion. De Sousa examines how Shakespeare defines other cultures in terms of the interplay of gender, text and habitat. Written in a provocative style, this readable book provides a wealth of fascinating information both on contemporary stage productions and on race and gender relations in early modern Europe.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Plates
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 ‘The Uttermost Parts of Their Maps’: Frontiers of Gender
• 2 Joan of Arc, Margaret of Anjou, and the Instability of Gender
• 3 Textual Encodings in The Merchant of Venice
• 4 Textual Intersections: Titus Andronicus and Othello
• 5 Habitat, Race, and Culture in Antony and Cleopatra
• 6 Cultural Re-encounters in The Tempest
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index