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    Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race

    Author(s): Ian Smith

    ISBN: 9781009224093
    Publication Date: 27/3/2025
    Pages: 280
    Format: Paperback
    Sale price£19.99 GBP

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    Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race

    Black Shakespeare: Reading and Misreading Race

    Cambridge University Press Bookshop

    Pickup available, Usually ready in 24 hours

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    Race may dominate everyday speech, media headlines and public policy, yet still questions of racialized blackness and whiteness in Shakespeare are resisted. In his compelling new book Ian Smith addresses the influence of systemic whiteness on the interpretation of Shakespeare's plays. This far-reaching study shows that significant parts of Shakespeare's texts have been elided, misconstrued or otherwise rendered invisible by readers who have ignored the presence of race in early modern England. Bringing the Black American intellectual tradition into fruitful dialogue with European thought, this urgent interdisciplinary work offers a deep, revealing and incisive analysis of individual plays, including Othello, The Merchant of Venice and Hamlet. Demonstrating how racial illiteracy inhibits critical practice, Ian Smith provides a necessary anti-racist alternative that will transform the way you read Shakespeare.