SHAKESPEARE JUNGLE FEVER

"This book takes Shakespeare's plays as a site for studying the specter of interracial sex - of a "jungle fever" - in early modern England's envisionings of itself. Shakespeare's works here assume the status of interrogating, of re-envisioning, rather than simply restaging the scene of a horrific sexual encounter. The author argues that early modern England's national-imperial aesthetic, notably its evocation of classicism, relies significantly on a textual and cultural manipulation of race." The author anchors his claims by focusing on a variety of classical and early modern sites - Rome, Venice, Ireland, Africa, and Egypt - and by examining a range of sources, including dramatic texts, narrative poems, paintings and other illustrations, medical lore, and geographies. Through close studies of Titus Andronicus, Othello, and Antony and Cleopatra, this book deepens our understanding of race (then and now) as well as the role granted Shakespeare in cultural discourses past and present.