モリスン『デズデモーナ』におけるシェイクスピア『オセロー』表象の変遷

――謎の女性たち――

抄録

This paper will focus on women whose identities are unclear from the perspectives of gender, sexism, racism, friendship, and post-colonialism. Morrison turns to Emilia, Sa’ran, M. Brabantio, and Soun because these four women reveal many truths that Shakespeare’s Othello did not. Of these, the dialogue between Desdemona and Barbary / Sa’ran is the most intense. Morrison even seems to place Sa’ran at the center of Desdemona. The reason behind this idea is, in my opinion, because she is black.
In her book of criticism, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, Morrison argues that to understand American literature, we must place black people at its center and not literarily marginalize them. By looking at blackness in detail, she tries to examine the true nature of literary whiteness and to give a proper understanding of American literature. Morrison created Desdemona from a post-colonial perspective that fundamentally rethinks the history written by the victors, arguing that the representation of black people has been falsely “reproduced” in the world’s literary works.
In Othello, Morrison criticized that there was no friendship between women (Desdemona and Emilia, Desdemona and Barbary /Sa’ran), and in Vogel’s Desdemona, Emilia claimed saying “there’s no such thing as friendship between women.” However, in Morrison’s Desdemona, female friendships develop between Desdemona and Emilia, Desdemona and Sa’ran, and M. Brabantio and Soun. Morrison revised and ideally reconstructed Othello from the point of view of these enigmatic women. Sellars once explained to Morrison that he found Shakespeare’s Othello “a thin play” with stereotypical principal characters. Morrison convinced Sellars that there was more textual depth to Desdemona than productions had typically extrapolated, but she conceded that even Shakespeare had not allowed Desdemona to tell her full story. Morrison created a unique musical, a sequel to Othello, so to speak, based on his discussions with Sellars.