Shakespearean Intertexts and European Identities in Contemporary Black British Fiction

Abstract

The article analyses the presence of William Shakespeare as intertext in three recent novels by black British writers which deploy the work of the Bard as they explore British and European identities. Caryl Phillips’s The Nature of Blood recreates an Othello-like figure who in early Modern Venice struggles to come to terms with his identity as an outsider. Zadie Smith’s White Teeth summarises the influence of imperial history in contemporary English society with The Tempest’s idea that ‘What is past is prologue’ and evokes an African presence in Shakespeare’s England by way of the dark lady in sonnets. Bernardine Evaristo’s Soul Tourists presents a journey through European countries that are haunted by the ghosts of old African inhabitants, among them the dark lady of the sonnets. These novels use their dialogue with William Shakespeare to construct stories of Africans in Europe in the past centuries that question received narratives of the British nation and undermine the myth of an all-white Europe.