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- Title
When the master's tools fail: Racial euphemism in Shakespeare appropriation, or, the activist value of Premodern Critical Race Studies.
- Authors
Corredera, Vanessa I.
- Abstract
As premodern studies continues to develop tools for anti‐racist scholarship and pedagogy, this essay establishes the stakes of adaptation/appropriation studies especially committing to these efforts. Turning to the novel The Serpent of Venice, I demonstrate how appropriations that engage with race too often employ what I frame as racial euphemism: palliative engagements with race that sidestep questions of power and inequity. This is especially true for those attempting to maintain distance between Shakespeare and questions of race, and especially racism, often under the guise of historical accuracy. This racially euphemistic approach, therefore, disseminates to especially wide audiences white supremacist approaches to race. Premodern Critical Race Studies provides a vital activist framework, and with it, important conceptual and methodological tools, that help adaptation/appropriation scholars identify racial euphemism in premodern retellings, while at the same time offering appropriators scholarship that can help them craft anti‐racist appropriations that resist the idea of a race‐neutral past.
- Subjects
SHAKESPEARE, William, 1564-1616; RACE; EUPHEMISM; RACE relations; ANTI-racism education; ANTI-racism
- Publication
Literature Compass, 2023, Vol 20, Issue 7-9, p1
- ISSN
1741-4113
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1111/lic3.12634