This article aims to relocate Shakespeare’s Othello the Moor in the cultural roots of Moorish Spain, arguing that he is not a Moor in the inclusionary, monolithic sense of the term, but a diasporic Iberian finding refuge in fifteenth–sixteenth-century Venice. It seeks to contextualise Shakespeare’s play by setting the Othello/Iago binary as an epitomisation of the Spanish inquisition. Giving Othello, the Moor of Venice an allegorical reading against its historical background facilitates better perception of the play’s motivational dynamics: why a Moor? And why such extreme enmity? To substantiate the argument, textual and contextual factors, such as characters’ appellations and the Moorish refugee’s ‘royal siege’, are viewed from a different perspective, factors designed to direct the mind towards specific realities, already visible to the playwright’s audience.
This paper aims to demonstrate how black resistance is alive in John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Morrison’s God Help the Child respectively. It equally emphasizes that Booker and Crooks, the characters through which the two Authors have typified the enormous misery of black-skinned people, attempt to resist racism through knowledge and self-pride. Foremost, racism is one of the most nefarious acts that both Crooks and Booker suffer from. Crooks dwells in the stable with all the animals of the ranch. Likewise, Booker witnesses’ racism in the indifference of cops to search his disappeared brother because he is a black kid. Plus, Booker is grown up in a warm familial ambiance surrounded by his father, mother, and siblings. The parents consider reading books as the most suitable means which can polish and refine their children’s minds. On the other side, Crooks, the sharp-witted black man who is in charge of the barn in the ranch, entertain himself by reading a lot of books. Moreover, self-pride is depicted clearly when Booker ends up with his girlfriend Bride when he figures out that she goes to help Sofia Huxley that was thrown in jail for fifteen years for a crime she perpetrates against children. Similarly, Crooks scowls and explodes in Lennie’s face to leave his room as a counter reaction to his exclusion from playing cards with whites in the bunkhouse.
This paper aims to investigate the role played by Hailsham, the fictional boarding school in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, in the mind of its central characters as seen through Gaston Bachelard’s conception of space. The article then aims to explore how the memory of Hailsham works as a coping mechanism for some of the novel’s characters, especially for Kathy. After a brief survey of Bachelard’s spatial criticism, the article then discusses the elements of intimacy in the space of Hailsham and portrays the boarding school as a oneiric house or a childhood home in Bachelard’s terms. By using an analytical method, this study offers an examination of two notions, that of memory and that of imagination, which are built upon the aspect of association and intimacy. Following the development of the plot of Never Let Me Go, the article sheds light on the role played by the so-called “cottages” in the shaping of these character’s relations to themselves, to each other, and to the outside world. This paper opens the door to other critics to read Never Let Me Go from the perspective of other spatial theorists like Mitchel Foucault, Henri Lefevbre, and Edward Soja.
This paper aims to investigate the role played by Hailsham, the fictional boarding school in Kazuo Ishiguro’s novel Never Let Me Go, in the mind of its central characters as seen through Gaston Bachelard’s conception of space. The article then aims to explore how the memory of Hailsham works as a coping mechanism for some of the novel’s characters, especially for Kathy. After a brief survey of Bachelard’s spatial criticism, the article then discusses the elements of intimacy in the space of Hailsham and portrays the boarding school as a oneiric house or a childhood home in Bachelard’s terms. By using an analytical method, this study offers an examination of two notions, that of memory and that of imagination, which are built upon the aspect of association and intimacy. Following the development of the plot of Never Let Me Go, the article sheds light on the role played by the so-called “cottages” in the shaping of these character’s relations to themselves, to each other, and to the outside world. This paper opens the door to other critics to read Never Let Me Go from the perspective of other spatial theorists like Mitchel Foucault, Henri Lefevbre, and Edward Soja.
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