Download or read book Transforming Shakespeare written by Marianne Novy and published by Palgrave Macmillan. This book was released on 1999-01-01 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 twentieth 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. The essays examine how these works use rewritings of Shakespeare to address issues of gender, race, sexuality, colonialism, environmentalism, class, and nationalism, as well as with the general question of our relation to cultural tradition at the start of the new millennium. Transforming Shakespeare offers a striking new look at Shakespeare and his place in a modern, diverse world.