Digital Commons Network^™

The Spanish Tragedy As Intertext For Orhan Pamuk's Kar (Snow), Rachel Hile

Rachel E. Hile

In Kar (2002; English version Snow, 2004), Orhan Pamuk uses the genre of early modern English revenge tragedy, specifically Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, to emphasize the theme of revenge and to illuminate his ideas about women's agency within Islamic culture. Through his departures from the generic expectations of revenge tragedy, Pamuk conveys a sense of the moral complexity of the many acts of revenge in the novel. In another important alteration of this intertext, during the play-within-the-novel performance of The Spanish Tragedy, Kadife, who plays the Bel-imperia role, goes “off script” by not committing suicide on …