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Whose Othello Are We Talking About Anyway?
Tayeb Salih's Othello in Season of Migration to the North
in Critical Survey
Author:
Joseph Khoury
Joseph Khoury
Professor, St. Francis Xavier University, Canada jkhoury@stfx.ca
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Abstract
This article argues that Tayeb Salih, in his most famous novel, tackles Shakespeare's best-known play in the Arabic world, Othello, but not in the usual fashion. Instead of adapting the protagonist, Salih ventriloquises him to force a fresh understanding of Othello by Western readers, thus challenging what was at the time of his novel's publication a largely nineteenth-century reading of Othello. At the same time, Salih creates a hybridised protagonist of his own, one who comes to understand that he is neither Sudanese nor English. This reading thus sheds light on both Shakespeare's play and Salih's novel, arguing that the novel allows us to understand the play contextually rather than anachronistically. Fundamentally, Salih destabilises Arab notions of identity, arguing that the world has become ‘all mixed up’ and needs to move beyond essentialist identities.
Contributor Notes
Joseph Khoury is Professor in the Department of English at St. Francis Xavier University in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Canada. His main interests are Machiavelli, Shakespeare, Marlowe, political philosophy, comparative literature, and the modern Arabic novel. His critical edition of Barnabe Riche's romance, The Adventures of Brusanus, Prince of Hungaria (1592), a source text for Shakespeare's Measure for Measure, has garnered praise. Joseph has published articles on Aimé Césaire and Shakespeare, on William Thomas's plagiarism of Machiavelli, on Marlowe and Machiavelli, and on Machiavelli and terrorism. Email: jkhoury@stfx.ca