Postcolonial Shakespeare Studies
June 24th, 2009
Jelena Kovacevic-Löckner: Postcolonial Shakespeare Studies: Re-readings, Re-Writings and Appropriations of The Tempest and Othello
The reception of Shakespeare’s works in postcolonial theory and literature since the 1980s has triggered a turn in Shakespeare studies, both contesting and re-constituting the bard’s ‘universality’.
This lecture will trace the critical and productive reception of two paradigmatic Shakespearean plays –The Tempest and Othello – in postcolonial theory and literature. After an introduction to the re-readings of Shakespeare’s texts through postcolonial literary theory, the focus will be on two major strategies of dealing with Shakespeare’s texts on the part of postcolonial authors: appropriation and re-writing. Examples will be taken amongst others from the works of Marina Warner (Indigo) and George Lamming (Water with Berries).
This lecture will try to account for the ways in which postcolonial engagement with Shakespeare’s works has not only decisively changed our view of Shakespeare today, but has also contributed important critical impulses for the study of literature as a study of culture.
Jelena Kovacevic-Löckner is a scholarship holder at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC) and is currently preparing a doctoral thesis on Shakespearean intertexts in Magic Realism. In the academic year of 2007/08 she was an associate member and research assistant at theInternational PhD Programme (IPP). She studied Comparative Literature, English Philology, Cultural Studies and Musicology at the University of Münster, and joined a DAAD exchange progamme in Cultural Studies at the Willy-Brandt-Centre, Wroclaw, Poland. She has extensive work experience both on and off stage.