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Women Talk Back to Shakespeare: Contemporary Adaptations and Appropriations PDF

201 Pages·2021·6.256 MB·English
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WOMEN TALK BACK TO SHAKESPEARE This study explores more recent adaptations published in the last decade whereby women—either authors or their characters—talk back to Shakespeare in a variety of new ways. “Talking back to Shakespeare”, a term common in intertextual discourse, is not a new phenomenon, particularly in literature. For centuries, women writers—novelists, playwrights, and poets—have responded to Shakespeare with inventive and often transgressive retellings of his work. Thus far, feminist scholarship has examined creative responses to Shakespeare by women writers through the late twentieth century. This book brings together the “then” of Shakespeare with the “now” of contemporary literature by examining how many of his plays have cultural currency in the present day. Adoption and surrogate childrearing; gender fluidity; global pandemics; impri­ sonment and criminal justice; the intersection of misogyny and racism—these are all pressing social and political concerns, but they are also issues that are central to Sha­ kespeare’s plays and the early modern period. By approaching material with a fresh interdisciplinary perspective, Women Talk Back to Shakespeare is an excellent tool for both scholars and students concerned with adap­ tation, women and gender, and intertextuality of Shakespeare’splays. Jo Eldridge Carney is a Professor of English at The College of New Jersey where she teaches courses in early modern studies, folk and fairy tales, and contemporary literature. NEW INTERDISCIPLINARY APPROACHES TO EARLY MODERN CULTURE : CONFLUENCES AND CONTEXTS Series Editors: Carole Levin, [email protected] Marguerite Tassi, [email protected] This interdisciplinary series publishes manuscripts from a wide range of fields, including but not limited to literature, history, art history, musicology, philosophy, religion and political science, in order to cultivate a truly multifaceted understanding of the early modern period. This series offers innovative scholarship that models interdisciplinary methodologies to emerging scholars and students and publishes books that show how paradigm shifts in knowledge happen when disciplines cross-fertilize and share the fruits of their labor. Kingship, Madness, and Masculinity on the Early Modern Stage Mad World, Mad Kings Edited by Christina Gutierrez-Dennehy Women Talk Back to Shakespeare Contemporary Adaptations and Appropriations Jo Eldridge Carney WOMEN TALK BACK TO SHAKESPEARE Contemporary Adaptations and Appropriations Jo Eldridge Carney First published 2022 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2022 Jo Eldridge Carney The right of Jo Eldridge Carney to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. DOI: 10.4324/9781003166580 British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Carney, Jo Eldridge, 1954-author. Title: Women talk back to Shakespeare : contemporary adaptations and appropriations / Jo Eldridge Carney. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York : Routledge, 2022. | Series: New interdisciplinary approaches to early modern culture: confluences and contexts | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021020109 (print) | LCCN 2021020110 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367763527 (paperback) | ISBN 9780367763510 (hardback) | ISBN 9781003166580 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616--Adaptations--History and criticism. | English literature--Women authors--History and criticism. | Feminism and literature--English-speaking countries. | Women and literature--English-speaking countries. | LCGFT: Literary criticism. Classification: LCC PR2880.A1 C37 2022 (print) | LCC PR2880.A1 (ebook) | DDC 822.3/3--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020109 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021020110 ISBN: 978-0-367-76351-0 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-367-76352-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-16658-0 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003166580 Typeset in Bembo by Taylor & Francis Books For Ruby, who talks back in all the best ways CONTENTS Acknowledgements viii Introduction 1 1 Toni Morrison and Rokia Traoré’s Desdemona and William Shakespeare’s Othello 9 2 Elizabeth Nunez’s Prospero’s Daughter and William Shakespeare’s The Tempest 34 3 Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed and William Shakespeare’s The Tempest 57 4 Jeanette Winterson’s The Gap of Time and William Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale 80 5 Mark Haddon’s The Porpoise and William Shakespeare’s Pericles 106 6 Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven and William Shakespeare’s King Lear 134 7 Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet and Shakespeare’s family in fact and fiction 158 Afterword 180 Index 182 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS An earlier version of Chapter 1 appeared in Borrowers and Lenders: The Journal of Shakespeare and Appropriation 9.1 (2014). Librarians are essential to any academic project, but when much of a book is written during a pandemic the work they do is even more valuable. I am enormously grateful to Dean Taras Pavlovsky and the entire staff of The College of New Jersey Library, and especially Dina Carmy, Bethany Sewall, and David Murray for their efforts in ensuring we all had the resources we needed for our scholarship and our teaching in this challenging year. Thank you also to the accommodating and cheerful staff at the Hopewell branch of the Mercer County Library. Thank you to the wonderful TCNJ students who were willing to “talk back” and help me work through many of these ideas in our seminars: Paige Barmakian, Nicole Beagin, Shannon Cassaro, Jaime Corrigan, Daniel Hitchen, Rachel Howanich, Britta Koep, Angela Lengner, Cassidy Mansmann, Ally McHugh, Lauren Muccilli, Erin Murray, Catie Nadler, Carlie Pressler, Sarah Reynolds, Amanda Riccitelli, Angelica Rocco, Princy Shah, Courtney Shein, Destiny Valerio, Kattlyn Vasquez, and Made­ leine Zurcher. I hope you will recognize traces of our vigorous discussions and healthy disagreements in these pages. Michelle Ordini’s incredible management of the English Department makes it possible for all of us to do our work better and thanks can never be enough for all that she does. Thank you to Eleanor Mackay Carney, Silas Jones, and Carter Wells for their research assistance and support, to Mindi McMann for her expert and thoughtful advice on sections of the book, and to David Blake for his steady encouragement. Thank you to Dean Jane Wong and TCNJ for research support, and to Isabel Voice and Laura Pilsworth at Routledge for making this such a pleasant process. My deepest debt is to Carole Levin, my dear friend of many decades, who has encouraged this book from the beginning and gave useful feedback throughout. Car­ ole’s reputation as a scholar who cares deeply about advancing the work of others is Acknowledgements ix well-deserved, and I have been so fortunate to be on the receiving end of her extra­ ordinarily generous mentorship and friendship. To both Carole and Marguerite Tassi, co-editors of this new series, New Interdisciplinary Approaches to Early Modern Culture: Confluences and Contexts, thank you for your support on this project and for initiating a series that will allow more innovative and interesting work to join the scholarly conversation.

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