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Shaping Shakespeare, Reflecting History: Adaptations Of Othello For Children In 1990s Britain, Karley Adney

Scholarship and Professional Work of the Provost's Staff

In this article, two 1990s British adaptations of Shakespeare's Othello for children are studied with the primary critical lens of New Historicism. This analysis concerns itself with the cultural resonances adaptors pass to their readers and how those traces shape the Shakespearean texts they adapt. This study contends that cultural contexts, transactions, and negotiations of the time incontestably shape these adaptations. To truly appreciate the choices made by the adaptors of the 1990s, reflections on Britain in the 1980s serve as points of comparison. As a result, analyzing and accounting for the cultural influences provides a whole reading of the …