Indian Supplements to Shakespeare: The Hungry and We That Are Young

Poonam Trivedi

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.30.07

Authors

Poonam Trivedi University of Delhi https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7923-068X

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.30.07

Keywords:

global, local, versioning, supplement, substitute, surplus

Abstract

While there is no longer any debate about Shakespeare’s position as a global author, the rapidly expanding worldwide archive of the versioning of his works continues to pose a critical challenge. Questions like how far and to what extent can this be seen as Shakespeare or not Shakespeare are raised. Estimation of value is vexed, too: does it reside mainly in the local, or can it also extrapolate meaning globally? Methodologies, too, are debated: is archiving the starting or the endpoint of reception? Or is the construction of networks of analyses around and between them the mode towards negotiating appreciation?

Taking a leaf out of Derrida’s “That Dangerous Supplement,” this paper will propose a critical perspective of supplementarity as an intervention in the debate on the proliferating versioning of Shakespeare. This sees the traffic in Shakespeare as both a surplus, a plenitude enriching another plenitude and also a substitute filling a void. It considers translation, adaptation, appropriation, and even performance of Shakespeare as additions which enhance and complete making good an insufficiency. It will locate this discussion on two much-acclaimed adaptations to emerge out of India: the film The Hungry (2017), directed by Bornila Chatterjee, of Titus Andronicus, and the novel We That Are Young (2017) by Preti Taneja, based on King Lear.

Author Biography

Poonam Trivedi, University of Delhi

Poonam Trivedi taught at Indraprastha College, University of Delhi. She has co-edited books on Indian and Asian Shakespeare: Asian Interventions in Global Shakespeare: ‘All the World’s His Stage’ (2020), Shakespeare and Indian Cinemas: ‘Local Habitations’ (2018) and Shakespeare’s Asian Journeys: Critical Encounters, Cultural Geographies, and the Politics of Travel (2017), Re-playing Shakespeare in Asia (2010) and India’s Shakespeare: Translation, Interpretation and Performance (2005) and has authored a CD “King Lear in India” (2006). Her latest articles are in the Cambridge Companion to Shakespeare on Screen and in Cahiers Elizabethans. She is on the editorial board of the Shakespeare on Screen series.

References

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Bhandari, Arpita. “Indian Film based on Titus Andronicus is ‘Monsoon Wedding’ gone horribly wrong.” 24 September 2017. https://scroll.in/reel/851696/indian-filmbased-on-titus-andronicus-is-monsoon-wedding-gone-horribly-wrong Accessed 10 December 2023.

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Chatterjee, Bornila, dir. The Hungry. BFI. 2017.

Lei, Bi qi Beatrice. “The Fatal Attraction of Empress Americana: Titus Andronicus as Japan’s Post-colonial Allegory.” Forthcoming in Shakespeare in the ‘Post’ Colonies.

Maus, Katharine Eisaman, ed. “Introduction.” Titus Andronicus. The Norton Shakespeare. Eds. Stephen Greenblatt, Walter Cohen, Jean E. Howard and Katherine Eisaman Maus. New York: W.W. Norton and Co. 1977.

Maxwell, J. C., ed. “Introduction.” Titus Andronicus. The Arden Shakespeare, London: Methuen, 1968.

Taneja, Preti. “Adapting Shakespeare: Directors and Practitioners in Conversation.” Women and Indian Shakespeares. Eds. Thea Buckley, Mark Thornton Burnett, Sangeeta Datta and Rosa Garcia-Periago. London: The Arden Shakespeare, Bloomsbury, 2022. 243-261. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350234352.ch-012

Taneja, Preti. “Lear’s Indian Daughters.” 28 March 2013, Blogging Shakespeare, Shakespeare Birthplace Trust.

Taneja, Preti. We That Are Young. Norwich: Galley Beggar Press, 2017.