Historicizing the Bard of Avon: Shakeshifting Shakespeare and the Constitution of Guarati Literary Culture

Hemang Ashwinkumar

doi:10.18778/2083-8530.30.08

Authors

Hemang Ashwinkumar Bilingual Poet, Translator, Independent Scholar, Central University of Gujarat https://orcid.org/0009-0000-4382-1106

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18778/2083-8530.30.08

Keywords:

Shakespeare, Gujarati Literary Culture, Parsi Theatre, translation, adaptation, literary historiography

Abstract

In a century and a half of his continuous presence in India, Shakespeare has shapeshifted into manifold textual and performative “avatars,” from an agent of moral edification transforming into a subversive stick with which to beat the imperial culture. The “Bard” adapted to his immediate environs like a chameleon on the one hand, while standing tall on his native stage, on the other, asserting the imperial will and throwing the native cultural background in sharp relief. The Gujarati theatre and literary histories have borne witness to this ceaseless transformation. The present paper traces the high points in the histories of the “Bard’s” localization—from Shakespeare to Sheikh Pir—as well as his “non-localizations,” examining in the process how they reflect the evolution of the Gujarati literary culture along the caste, ethnic, and communal lines. An attempt is made in the paper to understand the role these histories could have played in engendering the essentialized, elitist, and monolithic ideas and identities that Gujarati literary culture still suffers from. Finally, the paper also points to the possible directions the translation and staging of Shakespeare’s plays can take in the postcolonial era.

Author Biography

Hemang Ashwinkumar, Bilingual Poet, Translator, Independent Scholar, Central University of Gujarat

Hemang Ashwinkumar, Ph.D. in English, is a poet, fiction writer, translator, editor and critic who writes in Gujarati and English. His works have been translated into Greek, Italian and other Indian languages. Penguin Random House, India has published his translation of Gujarati Dalit writer Dalpat Chauhan’s novel Vultures (2022), and edited collection of short stories titled Fear and Other Stories (2023). His Gujarati translations of Arun Kolatkar’s poetry collections Kala Ghoda Poems (2020), Sarpa Satra (2021) and Jejuri (2024) have been critically acclaimed. His scholarly monograph Translating the Translated: Poetics and Politics of Literary Translation in India will be published by Orient Blackswan in 2024. His translation of eminent painter-poet Gulammohammed Sheikh’s collection of autobiographical essays Gher Jatan (On the Way Home) will be published by Seagull Books, Kolkata.

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