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1

Reading Othello Through the Prism of Conceptual Metaphor Theory: Animals as Source Domains

100%

Ćirović M.

Academic Journal of Modern Philology

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2022

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issue 15

143-154

EN

This paper aims at reading Shakespeare’s play Othello through the prism of cognitive linguistics, more specifically through the lens of conceptual metaphor theory. Metaphorical linguistic expressions that have animals in the source domain are extracted from the play so that matters of race and gender could be discussed from below the level of words, where cognition and conceptualization occur. As the analysis of metaphorical linguistic expressions progresses, the representation of evil will appear to be intertwined with the perception of gender and race, becoming yet another cognitive interest of the literary text. While African American studies, critical race theory, post-colonial studies, Marxist and feminist readings have immensely benefitted the comprehension of the play, conceptual metaphor theory promises to explore and explain how a derogatory perception of “Other” emerges in Othello, along with the offensive language that embodies it. Additional relevant concepts that account for the disturbing pace of the plot towards the catastrophe and tragic end are indoctrination and manipulation. These are specifically related to Iago’s perceptual playing around with unstable and highly sensitive notions such as race, gender, fallen virtue, degraded and demonic human nature, which he presents through disquieting mental images conveyed by powerful metaphorical language.

2

Designing Goddesses: Shakespeare’s "Othello" and Marian Nowiński’s "Otello Desdemona"

88%

Laskowska-Hinz S.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

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2020

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vol. 21

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issue 36

135-151

EN

The article discusses the intertextual relationship between the poster by Marian Nowiński, Otello Desdemona, and the content of Shakespeare’s play, while presenting the most important elements of the plot that are decisive for the portrayal of Desdemona. It also discusses the tradition of female nudes in Western art. This allows to usher out these characteristic features of elements of Desdemona that fashion her into Venus Caelestis and Venus Naturalis. The article focuses on the ambivalence of Nowiński’s poster and discusses the significance of the paintings by Titian, Giorgione, and Fuseli in designing the figure of Desdemona as a goddess.

3

Othello and the perception of race within the cultural context of Czech and Slovak theatres

88%

Koblišková Z.

Theatralia: Revue současného myšlení o divadelní kultuře (Theatralia: The revue of contemporary thought on theatre culture)

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2018

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vol. 21

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issue 2

127-140

EN

This study in its current form has been inspired by the keynote lecture of Dr Christian M. Billing at the Brno Theatralia Conference in 2016 analysing two productions of Othello, one of them being the production of 2014 at the National Theatre Brno. He questioned the way scenography could raise issues of race and identity using common material signifiers such as props, costumes or theatre make-up. The presented study proposes a polemic with his conclusions based on an overview of the productions of Othello within the Czechoslovak context and suggests Czech and Slovak critics should pay more attention to the issues of race and identity with regards to productions of Othello.

4

Seeing the Spider: The Jealous Rage of Exchange in The Winter’s Tale and Othello

88%

Innes P.

Anglica. An International Journal of English Studies

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2016

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issue 25/3

69-80

EN

A venerable critical tradition has long ﬂavoured the reception of Shakespeare’s plays with psychology. Characters are read as real people, and as a consequence, the plays are analysed from the starting point of an individual character’s inward personality. However, this literary reading of the plays fails to take into account not only the performance of character on the Renaissance stage but also the theatrical culture that predetermines forms of characterisation for that audience. The playing of roles within this drama needs to be continually re-investigated, and in the case of The Winter’s Tale and Othello, fully reimagined. The conventional ascription of the plot development entirely to the jealousy of both Leontes and Othello can accordingly be reworked. The modern obsession with psychology obscures a ﬁeld of semantic forces that goes well beyond the purview of any individual to a social encoding of possible behaviours. This restores multiple potentialities to the plays in performance, freeing them from a narrow insistence that meaning is rooted entirely in the individual. This in turn provides a context for deeper analysis of gender roles and how they intersect with the impetus generated by patriarchal modes of inheritance.

5

“I saw Othello’s visage in his mind”, or “White Mask, Black Handkerchif”: Satoshi Miyagi’s Mugen-Noh Othello and Translation Theory

88%

Motohashi T.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

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2016

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vol. 14

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issue 29

43-50

EN

This paper tries to detect key elements in the translated performance of Shakespeare by focusing on Satoshi Miyagi’s “Mugen-Noh Othello” (literally meaning “Dreamy Illusion Noh play Othello”), first performed in Tokyo by Ku=Nauka Theatre Company in 2005, and subsequently seen in New Delhi, having now acquired a classic status of renowned Shakespearean adaptation in a foreign language that bridges a gap between the traditional form of Noh and the modern stage-presentation.

6

“Far more fair than black”: Othellos on the Chilean Stage

75%

Baldwin Lind P.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

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2020

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vol. 22

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issue 37

139-170

EN

This article reviews part of the stage history of Shakespeare’s Othello in Chile and, in particular, it focuses on two performances of the play: the first, in 1818, and the last one in 2012-2020. By comparing both productions, I aim to establish the exact date and theatrical context of the first Chilean staging of the Shakespearean tragedy using historical sources and English travellers’ records, as well as to explore how the representation of a Moor and of blackness onstage evolved both in its visual dimension - the choice of costumes and the use of blackface-, and in its racial connotations alongside deep social changes. During the nineteenth century Othello became one of the most popular plays in Chile, being performed eleven times in the period of 31 years, a success that also occurred in Spain between 1802 and 1833. The early development of Chilean theatre was very much influenced not only by the ideas of the Spaniards who arrived in the country, but also by the available Spanish translations of Shakespeare; therefore, I argue that the first performances of Othello as Other - different in origin and in skin colour - were characterised by an imitative style, since actors repeated onstage the biased image of Moors that Spaniards had brought to Chile. While the assessment of Othello and race is not new, this article contrasts in its scope, as I do not discuss the protagonist’s actual origin, but how the changes in Chilean social and cultural contexts can reshape and reconfigure the performance of blackness and turn it into a meaningful translation of the Shakespearean Moor that activates audiences’ awareness of racism and fears of miscegenation.

7

Othello in the Balkans: Performing Race Rhetoric on the Albanian Stage

75%

Golemi M.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

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2020

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vol. 22

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issue 37

125-138

EN

This essay examines the racialized rhetoric in Fan Noli’s 1916 Othello translation and the racialized performance techniques employed in A.J. Ricko’s 1953 National Theatre of Albania production. Hoping to combat racial discrimination in Albania, Noli’s translation of Othello renders the Moor an exceptional Turk whose alienation in Venice was designed to mirror the Albanophobic experiences of Albanian immigrants. Moreover, the Albanian Othello can serve as a platform for addressing ethno-racial tensions between Albanians and Turks, northern and southern Albanians, and Albanians of color and white Albanians. Both Noli and Ricko believed there was an anti-racist power inherent within Shakespeare’s play. In the end, however, the race-based rhetoric in the Albanian language, the use of blackface make-up in performance, and the logic and rhetoric of Shakespeare’s play itself challenged these lofty goals for race-healing.

8

The Moor for the Malayali Masses: A Study of "Othello" in "Kathaprasangam"

75%

Thomas S.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

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2016

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vol. 13

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issue 28

105-116

EN

Shakespeare, undoubtedly, has been one of the most important Western influences on Malayalam literature. His works have inspired themes of classical art forms like kathakali and popular art forms like kathaprasangam. A secular story telling art form of Kerala, kathaprasangam is a derivative of the classical art form, harikatha. It was widely used to create an interest in modern Malayalam literature and was often used as a vehicle of social, political propaganda. The story is told by a single narrator who masquerades as the characters, and also dons the mantle of an interpreter and a commentator. Thus, there is immense scope for the artist to rewrite, subvert and manipulate the story. The paper explores V. Sambasivan’s adaptation of Othello in kathaprasangam to bring out the transformation the text undergoes to suit the cultural context, the target audience and the time-frame of the performance. The text undergoes alteration at different levels-from English language to Malayalam, from verse to prose, from high culture to popular art. The paper aims at understanding how a story set in a different time and distant place converses with the essential local milieu through selective suppression, adaptation and appropriation.

9

Othello-dor: Racialized Odor In and On Othello

63%

Steingass B.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

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2020

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vol. 22

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issue 37

37-49

EN

For Shakespearean scholars, the subject of scent in his work has remained relatively lukewarm to discussion. Shakespeare’s use of smell is not only equal to that of his other senses, but smell’s uniquely historical record both on and off the stage illuminate his works in more ways than currently perceived. Shakespeare’s usage of smell is found throughout his works, and their importance on the late Elizabethan and early Jacobean stage present a playwright-director that was exceptionally in-tune with his audiences on the page and in person. Positioned at this culturally significant point in Shakespeare’s career, one work’s utilization of scent textually and theatrically fully explicates the importance of odor in a societal, racial, and domestic capacity: Othello. This article explores and establishes the importance of smell in relation to textual Othello, his “dyed in mummy” handkerchief, and Desdemona in the written tragedy. Additionally, it studies the heighted focus of smell in Othello on a metatheatric level for Shakespeare on his early modern stage, calling attention to the myriad of odors contained in and around his Renaissance theatre and the result effect this awareness would have had on his contemporary audiences in their experience of Othello as a uniquely smell-oriented show.

10

Othello and the Ambivalences of Italian Blackface

63%

Bassi S., Scego I.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

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2020

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vol. 22

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issue 37

67-85

EN

Blackface is a cultural practice that appears ubiquitously in Italian history cutting across the political spectrum; it also lends itself to suprising anti-racist actions. This essay examines the use of blackface from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century by looking at its appearance in popular culture and, contextually and dialectically, at its adoption in selected performances of Othello, a play that holds special meaning in Italy because of its famous operatic adaptations. Africa and blackness were often represented in Italian visual arts in the early modern period, but the early colonial ventures of the new independent Italy create a new exotic imaginary that is particularly manifest in popular culture. Othello is influenced by new African discourses but it allso exists in a parallel dimension that somehow resists facile political interpretations. The colonial ventures of post-unification and Fascist Italy do not reverberate in any predictable manner in the growing popularity of the play. After World War II new forms of exoticism emerge that will be subverted only by a new postcolonial scenario that also coincides with a re-emergence of racism. Against the respective historical backdrops, we examine the idiosyncratic versions of blackface by Tommaso Salvini, Pietro Sharoff, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Carmelo Bene, and Elio De Capitani to suggest continuities and discontinuities in Italian interpretations of Othello.

11

How Should You Perform and Watch Othello and Hairspray in a Country Where You Could Never Hire Black Actors? Shakespeare and Casting in Japan

63%

Sae K.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

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2020

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vol. 22

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issue 37

87-101

EN

This paper discusses how Japanese theatres have handled race in a country where hiring black actors to perform Shakespeare’s plays is not an option. In English-speaking regions, such as the United States and the United Kingdom, it is common to hire a black actor for Othello’s title role. Blackface is increasingly unacceptable because it reminds viewers of derogatory stereotypes in minstrel shows, and it deprives black actors of employment opportunities. However, the situation is different in regions where viewers are unfamiliar with this Anglo-US trend. In Japan, a country regarded as so homogeneous that its census does not have any questions about ethnicity, it is almost impossible to hire a skilled black actor to play a title role in a Shakespearean play, and few theatre companies would consider such an idea. In this cultural context, there is an underlying question of how Japanese-speaking theatre should present plays dealing with racial or cultural differences. This paper seeks to understand the recent approaches that Japanese theatre has adopted to address race in Shakespearean plays by analysing several productions of Othello and comparing them with other major non-Shakespearean productions.

12

Interpreting Othello in the Arabian Gulf: Shakespeare in a Time of Blackface Controversies

63%

Hennessey K.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

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2020

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vol. 22

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issue 37

103-123

EN

This article opens with some brief observations on the phenomenon of Arab blackface-that is, of Arab actors “blacking up” to impersonate black Arab or African characters-from classic cinematic portrayals of the warrior-poet Antara Ibn Shaddad to more recent deployments of blackface in the Arab entertainment industry. It then explores the complex nexus of race, gender, citizenship and social status in the Arabian Gulf as context for a critical reflection on the author’s experience of reading and discussing Othello with students at the American University of Kuwait-discussions which took place in the fall of 2019, in the midst of a wave of controversies sparked by instances of Arab blackface on television and in social media.

13

Brown, Never Black: Othello on the Nazi Stage

63%

Bassey A.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

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2020

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vol. 22

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issue 37

51-65

EN

This paper examines the ways in which Othello was represented on the Nazi stage. Included in the theatre analyses are Othello productions in Frankfurt in 1935, in Berlin in 1939 and 1944, and in pre-occupation Vienna in 1935. New archival material has been sourced from archives in the aforementioned locations, in order to give detailed insights into the representation of Othello on stage, with a special focus on the makeup that was used on the actors who were playing the titular role. The aim of these analyses is not only to establish what Othello looked like on the Nazi and pre-Nazi stage, but also to examine the Nazis’ relationship with Shakespeare’s Othello within the wider context of their relationship with the Black people who lived in Nazi Germany at the time. In addition, the following pages offer insights into pre-Nazi, Weimar productions of Othello in order to create a more complex and comparative understanding of Nazi Othello productions and the wider theatrical context within which they were produced. In the end, we find out, based on existing evidence, why Othello was brown, and never Black.

14

Noh Creation of Shakespeare

63%

Munakata K.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

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2016

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vol. 14

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issue 29

87-106

EN

This article contains select comments and reviews on Noh Hamlet and Noh Othello in English and Noh King Lear in Japanese. The scripts from these performances were arranged based on Shakespeare’s originals and directed on stage and performed in English by Kuniyoshi Munakata from the early 1980s until 2014. Also, the whole text of Munakata’s Noh Macbeth in English (Munakata himself acted as Macbeth and Lady Macbeth in one play) is for the first time publicized. The writers of the comments and reviews include notable people such as John Fraser, Michael Barrett, Upton Murakami, Donald Richie, Rick Ansorg, James David Audlin, Jesper Keller, Jean-Claude Saint-Marc, Jean-Claude Baumier, Judy Kendall, Allan Owen, Yoshio ARAI, Yasumasa OKAMOTO, Tatsuhiko TAIRA, Hikaru ENDO, Kazumi YAMAGATA, Hanako ENDO, Yoshiko KAWACHI, Mari Boyd, and Daniel Gallimore.

15

Performing Protest in Cross-Cultural Spaces: Paul Robeson and Othello

51%

Sawyer R.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

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2017

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vol. 15

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issue 30

77-90

EN

When the famous African-American actor and singer Paul Robeson played the lead in Shakespeare’s Othello in London in 1930, tickets were in high demand during the production’s first week. The critical response, however, was less positive, although the reviews unanimously praised his bass-baritone delivery. When Robeson again played Othello on Broadway thirteen years later, critics praised not only his voice but also his acting, the drama running for 296 performances. My argument concerning Robeson uses elements first noted by Henri Lefebvre in his seminal work, The Production of Space, while I also draw on Paul Connerton’s work on commemorative practices. Using spatial and memorial theories as a backdrop for examining his two portrayals, I suggest that Robeson’s nascent geopolitical awareness following the 1930 production, combined with his already celebrated musical voice, allowed him to perform the role more dramatically in 1943.

16

From Social Justice to Metaphor: The Whitening of Othello in the Russian Imagination

51%

Khomenko N.

Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance

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2021

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vol. 23

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issue 38

75-89

EN

Othello was the most often-staged Shakespeare play on early Soviet stages, to a large extent because of its ideological utility. Interpreted with close attention to racial conflict, this play came to symbolize, for Soviet theatres and audiences, the destructive racism of the West in contrast with Soviet egalitarianism. In the first decades of the twenty-first century, however, it is not unusual for Russian theatres to stage Othello as a white character, thus eliminating the theme of race from the productions. To make sense of the change in the Russian tradition of staging Othello, this article traces the interpretations and metatheatrical uses of this character from the early Soviet period to the present day. I argue that the Soviet tradition of staging Othello in blackface effectively prevented the use of the play for exploring the racial tensions within the Soviet Union itself, and gradually transformed the protagonist’s blackness into a generalized metaphor of oppression. As post-collapse Russia embraced whiteness as a category, Othello’s blackness became a prop that was entirely decoupled from race and made available for appropriation by ethnically Slavic actors and characters. The case of Russia demonstrates that staging Othello in blackface, even when the initial stated goals are those of racial equality, can serve a cultural fantasy of blackness as a versatile and disposable mask placed over a white face.

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Reading Othello Through the Prism of Conceptual Metaphor Theory: Animals as Source Domains

Designing Goddesses: Shakespeare’s "Othello" and Marian Nowiński’s "Otello Desdemona"

Othello and the perception of race within the cultural context of Czech and Slovak theatres

Seeing the Spider: The Jealous Rage of Exchange in The Winter’s Tale and Othello

“I saw Othello’s visage in his mind”, or “White Mask, Black Handkerchif”: Satoshi Miyagi’s Mugen-Noh Othello and Translation Theory

“Far more fair than black”: Othellos on the Chilean Stage

Othello in the Balkans: Performing Race Rhetoric on the Albanian Stage

The Moor for the Malayali Masses: A Study of "Othello" in "Kathaprasangam"

Othello-dor: Racialized Odor In and On Othello

Othello and the Ambivalences of Italian Blackface

How Should You Perform and Watch Othello and Hairspray in a Country Where You Could Never Hire Black Actors? Shakespeare and Casting in Japan

Interpreting Othello in the Arabian Gulf: Shakespeare in a Time of Blackface Controversies

Brown, Never Black: Othello on the Nazi Stage

Noh Creation of Shakespeare

Performing Protest in Cross-Cultural Spaces: Paul Robeson and Othello

From Social Justice to Metaphor: The Whitening of Othello in the Russian Imagination