Buch, Englisch, 280 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 231 mm, Gewicht: 562 g
Reihe: Translation/Transnation
Shakespeare's Prince and Nasser's Ghost
Buch, Englisch, 280 Seiten, Format (B × H): 163 mm x 231 mm, Gewicht: 562 g
Reihe: Translation/Transnation
ISBN: 978-0-691-13780-3
Verlag: Princeton University Press
For the past five decades, Arab intellectuals have seen themselves in Shakespeare's Hamlet: their times "out of joint," their political hopes frustrated by a corrupt older generation. Hamlet's Arab Journey traces the uses of Hamlet in Arabic theatre and political rhetoric, and asks how Shakespeare's play developed into a musical with a happy ending in 1901 and grew to become the most obsessively quoted literary work in Arab politics today. Explaining the Arab Hamlet tradition, Margaret Litvin also illuminates the "to be or not to be" politics that have turned Shakespeare's tragedy into the essential Arab political text, cited by Arab liberals, nationalists, and Islamists alike. On the Arab stage, Hamlet has been an operetta hero, a firebrand revolutionary, and a muzzled dissident. Analyzing productions from Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Jordan, and Kuwait, Litvin follows the distinct phases of Hamlet's naturalization as an Arab. Her fine-grained theatre history uses personal interviews as well as scripts and videos, reviews, and detailed comparisons with French and Russian Hamlets. The result shows Arab theatre in a new light. Litvin identifies the French source of the earliest Arabic Hamlet, shows the outsize influence of Soviet and East European Shakespeare, and explores the deep cultural link between Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and the ghost of Hamlet's father. Documenting how global sources and models helped nurture a distinct Arab Hamlet tradition, Hamlet's Arab Journey represents a new approach to the study of international Shakespeare appropriation.
Autoren/Hrsg.
Fachgebiete
- Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturwissenschaft: Dramen und Dramatiker
- Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literarische Stoffe, Motive und Themen
- Geisteswissenschaften Theater- und Filmwissenschaft | Andere Darstellende Künste Theaterwissenschaft Theatertheorie, Ästhetik des Theaters, Theaterkritik
- Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Vergleichende Literaturwissenschaft
- Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Rezeption, literarische Einflüsse und Beziehungen
- Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Englische Literatur
Weitere Infos & Material
List of Illustrations ix
Preface and Acknowledgments xi
Note on Transliteration and Translation xvii
Introduction 1
"When Shakespeare Travels Abroad" 3
The Global Kaleidoscope 6
Hamlet and Political Agency 8
Chapter 1: Hamlet in the Daily Discourse of Arab Identity 13
"Time Out of Joint": Coming to Terms with History 16
"Shall We Be or Not Be?": Personifying the Group 23
"Words, Words, Words": Forging an Identity 29
"The Play's the Thing" 33
Chapter 2: Nasser's Dramatic Imagination, 1952-64 35
Revolutionary Drama 37
Theatre Joins the Battle 44
Shakespeare on the Sidelines 50
Chapter 3: The Global Kaleidoscope: How Egyptians Got Their Hamlet, 1901-64 53
Beyond Caliban 54
"Bend Again toward France" 59
"Do It, England!" 70
Independence and Soviet Shakespeare 75
Bidayr's "Cruel Text" 85
Chapter 4: Hamletizing the Arab Muslim Hero, 1964-67 91 In Search of Social Justice 93
Psychological Interiority as a Ground for Political Agency 95
Sulayman: "Justice or Oppression? That Is the Puzzle" 95
Al-Hallaj: "Who Will Give Me a Seeing Sword?" 103
De-Hamletized Revivals 111
Chapter 5: Time Out of Joint, 1967-76 114
"Something Is Rotten": Theatre and the 1967 Defeat 116
M artyrs for Justice: "Abstract and Brief Chronicles" of the 1970s 124
Sadat's Open Door: "To Cook or Not to Cook?" 134
A Dilemma 140
Chapter 6: Six Plays in Search of a Protagonist, 1976-2002 142
Silencing Hamlet 144
"A Play Can't Stab" 147
"His Sword Kept Sticking Up" 163
A Prodigal Cousin 173
Post-Political Laughs 179
Epilogue: Hamlets without Hamlet 183
Notes 189
Bibliography 237
Index 257
