Shakespeare, Race, and Feminist Critique

Bibliographic Data

ID23580898
AuthorsJean E Howard (English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, corresponding author)
Year2024
Pages30-51
Publication date2024-01-23
Open AccessNo
TypeCHAPTER
VenueOxford Handbook of Shakespeare and Race (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/oxfordhb/9780192843050.013.2
OpenAlexW4391275808
ISBN9780192843050
LanguageEN
References cited13

This chapter discusses the relationship of feminism and critical race studies in early modern scholarship by taking Shakespeare’s Othello and Shakespeare and Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen as case studies. Arguing that race and gender are interconnected systems of social difference, the chapter makes the case for an intersectional criticism alert to the many ways early modern race was conceptualized and to how early modern gender distinctions were affected by class and sexuality as well as by race. If, in Othello, race is primarily conceived within a Black/white binary, in The Two Noble Kinsmen it is best defined by distinctions between those of one’s kind and kin and those who are not. The chapter identifies the aggregation of traits and capacities that allows some characters to be recognized as of one kind, while excluding and negating others. For both plays, a feminist lens reveals the relational connections between categories of difference and the contradictions and multiplier effects stemming from their imbrication.

Race (biology) · Sociology · Gender Studies · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Gender and Feminism Studies · Literature: history, themes, analysis

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