奥塞罗他者.docVIP

《奥瑟罗》:一个西方“他者”的建构 [摘　要]莎士比亚的悲剧《奥瑟罗》是由意大利小说家钦齐奥的《故事百篇》改编而成的。但改编不仅是一个文体转换的过程,更涉及到政治文化权力与文本建构之间复杂的互动关系。原小说中无名的摩尔人被起名为“奥瑟罗”、故事场景从威尼斯到塞浦路斯的转换、主角命运从被判流放到刎剑自杀的安排等,体现了伊丽莎白时代后期英国社会主流意识形态对剧作家创作动机潜移默化的影响。通过复杂的操作过程,《奥瑟罗》既建构起一个西方的“他者”形象,迎合了主流意识形态,满足了观众的愿望;同时,也在一定程度上修正了当时流行于西方社会的有关黑人的刻板印象,体现了剧作家超越种族、肤色和文化差异及包容一切的人文主义精神。 [关键词]奥瑟罗;他者;文化身份 Othello: the Making of a Western“Other” Abstract:Shakespeare’s tragedy Othello, the Moor of Venice, is an adaptation from the novel Hecatommithi written by G. Cinthio, an Italian author. The adaptation is not just a transformation of the genre, but involves complex interaction between political/cultural power and textual construction, which includes three interplaying aspects as follows: First of all, as some scholars have pointed out, the protagonist in G. Cinthio’s original text was presented just as an anonymous Moor. It was when he came into the play that the Moor was named Othello by Shakespeare, which is meaningful and allusive. Othello alludes to the Ottoman Empire, a constant threat to the western world at that time, and Thorello denotes a young bull in Italian (made of toro, bull, with a diminutive suffix ello), reflecting both the racial discriminatory climate and the general fear of the age. Therefore, the playwright emphasizes the exiling condition the protagonist experiences as an“other”in Venice. For Othello, to win love and a good marriage means getting an identity on the foreign land and securing his inner peace. That’s the reason why he says if he loses the love of Desdemona, the Venetian girl ,“chaos is come again”. Another important adaptation in the Shakespearean text is the change of the main scenes of the play from Venice, a center of the western world, to Cyprus, a marginal island between Europe and the Ottoman Empire which was a nightmare to westerners. It seems that the playwright consciously reminded his audience of some parallels between the protagonist and the scenes he confronts. When Othello lived in Venice he was civ