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  • 8 - Shakespeare, England, Europe and Eurocentrism

  • Edited by Matthijs Lok, Robin de Bruin, Marjet Brolsma
  • Book:
    Eurocentrism in European History and Memory
    Published by:
    Amsterdam University Press
    Published online:
    21 November 2020
    Print publication:
    11 November 2019, pp 141-156

  • Summary

    Abstract

    This chapter seeks to define Shakespeare in ‘European’ terms. First, he is presented as an English and a British author, as perceived within the culture of his native island environment. Shakespeare is also brought into focus as a bilateral and a multilateral author, emphatically between the various nations that make up Europe. At the same time, Shakespeare is outlined as a writer who also tends to provide a joint, transnational frame of culture within such a European context. Finally, Shakespeare has been and is perceived as ‘European’ for his merits and demerits by non-European outsiders. This perspective from the outside brings into play issues involving the potential Eurocentrism of the man, his work, and the Shakespeare industry at large.

    Keywords: William Shakespeare, commemoration, appropriation, nationalism, World War I, World War II, postcolonialism, Brexit

    Introduction – Shakespeare and European Authors

    During the past 400 years, and chiefly since the beginning of Romanticism in the late eighteenth century, most if not all countries of Europe have, in their attempt to fashion distinct cultural, ethnic and linguistic self-identities, focused on native writers to represent the nation. Through a self-perpetuating process of celebration and commemoration, these writers have risen to pre-eminence as major representatives of their nation both by birth and by their perceived cultural and linguistic achievement. Thus, in the course of the centuries, England has come to embrace Shakespeare as its national poet, Portugal Camões, Spain Cervantes, Italy Dante, Germany both Goethe and Schiller. France, particularly during the politically turbulent nineteenth century, pondered the merits of Corneille and Racine, as well as Molière. This handful of more or less canonical authors only represents the tip of the iceberg. The fame of these few – which may even be said to extend across the globe – tends to eclipse that of countless other poets in Europe whose names may well sound unfamiliar to non-natives to their particular region: Alberto Salvadó (Andorra), Hristo Botev and Ivan Vazov (Bulgaria), William Heinesen (Faroe Islands), George Métivier (Guernsey), and so on.

    The cultural history of Europe may record that all of its member states have a tradition of celebrating and commemorating their literary hero figures, but among these figures Shakespeare holds pride of place.

The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare
  • Edited by Bruce R. Smith
  • Edited in association with Katherine Rowe
  • With Ton Hoenselaars, Akiko Kusunoki, Andrew Murphy, Aimara da Cunha Resende
  • Published online:
    17 August 2019
    Print publication:
    21 January 2016
  • The Cambridge Guide to the Worlds of Shakespeare aims to replicate the expansive reach of Shakespeare's global reputation. In pursuit of that vision, this work is transhistorical, international and interdisciplinary. Volume 1, Shakespeare's World, 1500–1660, includes a comprehensive survey of the world in which Shakespeare and his contemporaries lived, while Volume 2, The World's Shakespeare, 1660–Present, examines what the world has made of Shakespeare as a cultural icon over the past four centuries. For each of the work's twenty-eight broad subject areas, ranging from translation to popular culture to performing arts, an overview is followed by a series of shorter essays taking up particular aspects of the subject at hand. Richly illustrated with more than three hundred images between the two volumes, this work brings the world, life and afterlife of Shakespeare to readers, from non-academic Shakespeare fans and students to theater professionals and Shakespeare scholars.

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