Trans*textuality in William Shakespeare’s Othello: Italian, West African, and English Encounters

Abstract

William Shakespeare’s Othello (1604) displays a critical agenda towards the emerging colonialist discourse of his time and may have encountered, or even been influenced by, African oral literature. This thesis will be probed in this article by comparing Othello with the folktale “The Handsome Stranger” and the Trickster character, well known all across Western Africa, touching lightly on Leo Africanus’s The History and Description of Africa (1550) in the process. In doing so, Othello’s most acknowledged source text, “Un Capitano Moro” by Giovanni Battista Giraldi (1565), will be involved, thus complementing earlier comparative readings of “Un Capitano Moro” and Othello. This postcolonial comparative reading will finally embrace Ahmed Yerima’s adaptation of Othello, entitled Otaelo (2002). In doing so, the article will discuss striking parallels among all four texts, as well as differences and diversions. The latter are, however, not read as counter arguments to the possibility of an encounter; rather, discursive diversions are contextualised historically and trans*textually. Before delving into this analysis, the article will explore both historical probabilities and methodological challenges of reading African oral literature as possible sources of Shakespeare’s Othello, as well as theorise trans*textuality (as related to and yet distinct from Kristeva’s intertextuality and Genette’s transtextuality).This article has developed from two papers, one held in 2015 at a symposium dedicated to Michael Steppat in Bayreuth, who, ever since, accompanied this project with most helpful critical input; I owe him my sincerest gratitude. A second workshop on this topic was held in 2016 in Berlin in the presence of Shankar Raman, Christopher Joseph Odhiambo, and a student research group from Bayreuth with Taghrid Elhanafy, Weeraya Donsomsakulkij, Samira Paraschiv, and Mingqing Yuan. Taghrid Elhanafy dedicates her MA and PhD thesis to comparing Romeo and Juliet with several Arabic and Farsi versions of Layla and Majnun (Cf. Elhanafy 2018). Moreover, this article owes sincere gratitude to a most challenging and expert editing by Shirin Assa, PhD candidate at Bayreuth University, as well as Omid Soltani. Moreover, I wish to thank Dilan Zoe Smida and especially Samira Paraschiv for supporting me while doing research and working on notes and bibliography.