Transforming Shakespeare Contemporary Women's Re-Visions in Literature and Performance

by Novy, Marianne

• ISBN13: 9780312235093
• ISBN10: 0312235097
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-10-06
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

A surprisingly large number of women writers, directors, and performers have created works that talk back to Shakespeare, or to most earlier and more traditional interpretations of his plays, in the late 20th century. For example, Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres , which rewrites King Lear , and Marina Warner's Indigo , which rewrites The Tempest , protest biases against women and racist and imperialist attitudes that Shakespeare's plays have come to symbolize. In this collection, feminist critics--and Jane Smiley herself--explore a range of such rewritings, as well as recent Shakespeare performances directed by women.

Author Biography

Marianne Novy is Professor of English and former Director of Women’s Studies at the University of Pittsburgh. She is the author ofLove’s Argument: Gender Relations in Shakespeare and the editor of Women’s Re-Visions of Shakespeare.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	1	(12)
Marianne Novy
Making it New: Katie Mitchell Refashions Shakespeare-History	13	(22)
Barbara Hodgdon
Recent Australian Shrews: The ``Larrikin Element''	35	(16)
Penny Gay
A Girl's Got to Eat: Christine Edzard's Film of As You Like It	51	(16)
Patricia Lennox
Saving Desdemona and/or Ourselves: Plays by Ann-Marie MacDonald and Paula Vogel	67	(20)
Marianne Novy
Rita Dove's Shakespeares	87	(16)
Peter Erickson
Cleopatra as Diva: African-American Women and Shakespearen Tactics	103	(24)
Francesca T. Royster
The Polluted Quarry: Nature and Body in A Thousand Acres	127	(18)
Barbara Mathieson
King Lear and A Thousand Acres: Gender, Genre, and the Revisionary Impulse	145	(14)
Iska Alter
Shakespeare in Iceland	159	(22)
Jane Smiley
``Out of Shakespeare''?: Cordelia in Cat's Eye	181	(18)
Suzanne Raitt
Tempest Plainsong: Retuning Caliban's Curse	199	(18)
Diana Brydon
Sycorax Speaks: Marina Warner's Indigo and The Tempest	217	(20)
Caroline Cakebread
Claribel at Palace Dot Tunis	237	(22)
Linda Bamber
Contributors	259	(2)
Index	261