Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation: (Reproducing Shakespeare)

At a time when Shakespeare is becoming increasingly globalized and diversified it is urgent more than ever to ask how this appropriated 'Shakespeare' constructs ethical value across cultural and other fault lines. Making an important new contribution to rapidly expanding fields of study surrounding the adaptation and appropriation of Shakespeare, Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation is the first book to address the intersection of ethics, aesthetics, authority, and authenticity. The collected essays approach ethics from a rich variety of perspectives: some explore how ethical issues in Shakespeare's plays have been received and interpreted, some investigate the ethical commitments of Shakespearean appropriations, and some interrogate the ethical tenets that underlie the processes of adaptation and appropriation. As a whole, the volume suggests that appropriations are always on some level comparative and that their work has value in generating sites of discussion between otherwise strongly divergent frameworks of understanding.

Table of Contents:
Introduction; Alexa Huang and Elizabeth Rivlin 1. Shakespearean Rhizomatics: Adaptation, Ethics, Value; Doug Lanier 2. Recognizing Shakespeare, Rethinking Fidelity: A Rhetoric and Ethics of Appropriation; Christy Desmet 3. Ethics and the Undead: Reading Shakespearean (Mis)appropriation in Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula; Adrian Streete 4. Adaptation Revoked: Knowledge, Ethics, and Trauma in Jane Smiley's A Thousand Acres; Elizabeth Rivlin 5. Double Jeopardy: Shakespeare and Prison Theater; Courtney Lehmann 6. Theatre Director as Unelected Representative: Sulayman Al-Bassam's Arab Shakespeare Trilogy; Margaret Litvin 7. A "whirl of aesthetic terminology": Swinburne, Shakespeare, and Ethical Criticism; Robert Sawyer 8. "Raw-Savage" Othello: The First Staged Japanese Adaptation of Othello (1903) and Japanese Colonialism; Yukari Yoshihara 9. The Bard in Bollywood: The Fraternal Nation and Shakespearean Adaptation in Hindi Cinema; Gitanjali Shahani and Brinda Charry 10. Multilingual Ethics in Henry V and Henry VIII; Ema Vyroubalova 11. In Other Words: Global Shakespearean Transformations; Sheila T. Cavanagh Afterword: "State of Exception": Forgetting Hamlet; Thomas Cartelli Appendix: For the Record: Interview with Sulayman Al-Bassam; Margaret Litvin

About the Author :
Alexa Huang is Professor of English, Theatre, East Asian Languages and Literatures, and International Affairs at George Washington University, USA, where she co-founded and co-directs the Digital Humanities Institute. Her books include Chinese Shakespeares: Two Centuries of Cultural Exchange; Weltliteratur und Welttheater: Asthetischer Humanismus in der kulturellen Globalisierung; Shakespeare in Hollywood, Asia and Cyberspace (co-edited); and Class, Boundary and Social Discourse in the Renaissance (co-edited). Elizabeth Rivlin is Associate Professor of English at Clemson University, USA. She is the author of The Aesthetics of Service in Early Modern England and several essays in English Literary History.

Review :
"This thoughtful, imaginative, and generous collection takes us beyond the simple identification of Shakespearean appropriation as a field of study in order to place Shakespeare at the center of present-day manifestations of empire, performance, and the humanities. Text, author, and reader form and inform each other in an ethical process, Rivlin and Huang suggest, that mutually constitutes subjectivity and ethical identity. Individual essays productively disagree about the degree of power afforded to each point of this triangular relationship - text, author, reader - but communicate an urgent and compelling need for adaptors, readers, and viewers to reflect upon what 'Shakespeare' means in each of these context and to consider the social and ethical stakes of each of these positions." - Sujata Iyengar, Professor of English, University of Georgia, USA "This theoretically-sophisticated, cosmopolitan, and forward-looking collection of essays simultaneously questions and celebrates the ethical implications of a manifest 'global Shakespeare.' Huang and Rivlin reimagine appropriation of Shakespeare as itself a form of intersubjective and intercultural dialogue, in the tradition of moral philosophers such as Buber and Levinas, as well as political theorists such as Appiah, Nussbaum, and Taylor. A truly international team of contributors addresses the moral stakes of practices such as translation and intercultural performance; new concepts of interpersonal agency, community, and relatedness serve to illuminate a remarkable array of recent creative adaptations of Shakespeare." - Patrick Gray, Lecturer in Shakespeare and Renaissance Literature, Durham University, UK