The Great White Bard : Shakespeare, Race and the Future of His Legacy

Karim-Cooper, Farah

How is Shakespeare still relevant as titans of white Western history are challenged?

Professor Farah Karim-Cooper grew up loving the Bard, perhaps because Romeo and Juliet felt Pakistani to her. But why was being white as a ‘snowy dove’ essential to Juliet’s beauty?

Combining piercing analysis of race, gender and otherness in beloved plays from Othello to The Tempest with a radical reappraisal of Elizabethan London, The Great White Bard entreats us neither to idealise nor to fossilise Shakespeare but instead to look him in the eye and reckon with the discomforts of his plays, playhouses and society.

If we persist in reading Shakespeare as representative of only one group, as the very pinnacle of the white Western canon, then he will truly be in peril. But if we dare to bring Shakespeare down from his plinth, we might unveil a playwright for the twenty-first century. We might expand and enrich his extraordinary legacy. We might even fall in love with him all over again.

Kustantaja: UKBooks
Sidosasu: Kovakantinen
ean: 9780861545346
Ilmestymisvuosi: 2023
Kirjastoluokka: 86.1