University of Huddersfield Repository Partovi Tazeh Kand, Parviz Adaptations of Hamlet in Different Cultural Contexts: Globalisation, Postmodernism, and Altermodernism Original Citation Partovi Tazeh Kand, Parviz (2013) Adaptations of Hamlet in Different Cultural Contexts: Globalisation, Postmodernism, and Altermodernism. Doctoral thesis, University of Huddersfield. This version is available at http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/id/eprint/19264/ The University Repository is a digital collection of the research output of the University, available on Open Access. Copyright and Moral Rights for the items on this site are retained by the individual author and/or other copyright owners. 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For more information, including our policy and submission procedure, please contact the Repository Team at: [email protected]. http://eprints.hud.ac.uk/ ADAPTATIONS OF HAMLET IN DIFFERENT CULTURAL CONTEXTS: GLOBALISATION, POSTMODERNISM, AND ALTERMODERNISM PARVIZ PARTOVI TAZEH KAND A thesis submitted to the University of Huddersfield in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 2013 2 ABSTRACT Although there has traditionally been a resistance to the study of adaptations, adaptation studies as a subsection of ‗intertextuality‘ currently has a significant place in academic debates. Hamlet is ―the Mona Lisa of literature‖ (T.S. Eliot), and has been the subject of constant scrutiny, mythologizing and adaptation. Hamlet has been adapted and appropriated into and by various cultural contexts. Even confining our attention to the same medium as Shakespeare‘s text, there exists an array of theatrical adaptations in languages and cultures as diverse as Persian, Korean, Arabic, German, Russian, and Turkish. Borrowing Ludwig Wittgenstein‘s metaphor of ‗family resemblance,‘ I argue the usefulness of his idea, enabling us to examine not simply a small number of common properties among adaptations of Hamlet, but rather to explore the ‗complicated network of similarities overlapping and criss-crossing‘ (Philosophical Investigations, §66). I further propose subdividing the ‗global family‘ of Hamlets from around the world that participate in this/these web- like resemblances into ‗local families‘ of adapted Hamlets, to enable better intercultural and cross- cultural studies. In this thesis I analyse seven theatrical adaptations of Hamlet in Turkish, Russian, Arabic and Persian cultural contexts, from the perspectives of postmodernism, globalisation and altermodernism. I also scrutinise the Persian family of Hamlet in the light of ‗intertextuality‘. Given that each adaptation per se brings together ‗self‘ and ‗other‘ at the same time, I go on to coin two new terms: homointertextuality and heterointertextuality, in order to explore fully the various connections of the adaptations of Hamlet in Iran with the ‗cultural self‘ (Persian culture) and the ‗cultural other‘ (Anglophone culture). Keywords: Shakespeare; Hamlet; adaptation; Postmodernism; Globalisation ; Altermodernism; Hybridisation; Creolisation; Glocalisation; Interculturalism; Intertextuality; Homointertextuality; Heterointertextuality 3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is a great pleasure to thank the people who have helped and supported me in completing my thesis over the past three years. My first debt is to my main supervisor, Dr David Rudrum, whose unsurpassed knowledge, academic experience, not to mention his patience and friendship have been invaluable to me. I am also extremely grateful to my second supervisor, Dr Cath Ellis whose advice, support and criticism have been invaluable. I also wish to thank Dr Merrick Burrow for his supportive advice and help with my thesis. While finalising this thesis, I have enjoyed the great company and incredibly wide-ranging expertise of my colleagues in the English Department, School of Music, Humanities and Media. The lively and always cooperative atmosphere in the School was certainly inspired by the staff and my fellow postgraduates, who have also been most helpful. I am beholden to my friends who have let me go on and on about my thesis, often pitching in with references and insights. Their support and encouragement have been indispensable, and I would like particularly to acknowledge the contribution of Dr Abdullah Hamidi Bageri, Mohammad Jalali and Somaiyeh Hanaee and thank them for allowing me to reproduce our informal discussions in my thesis. I have been fortunate to be in personal contact with Dr Anna M. Butyrchyk, Dr Irina S. Skoropanova and Dr Natalia S. Povalyayeva at the Belarusian State University and Dr Margaret Litvin at Boston University, who nurtured my preliminary ideas. I am also grateful to Professor Samih Celenk in Turkey for promptly and generously providing me with an electronic version of his unpublished work. I am also grateful to both Dr Pat Hill and Mr Peter Gavigan who have been instrumental in helping me to tidy up my thesis and in proofreading it, though any remaining errors are wholly my responsibility. I would also like to thank Professor Daniel Fischlin at the University of Guelph for editing and accepting a section of my third chapter on ‗homointertextuality‘ and ‗heterointertextuality‘. 4 This is to be published in his forthcoming book OuterSpeares: Shakespeare, Intermedia, and the Limits of Adaptation in 2013. Lastly, it remains to thank my family who have been a constant source of support, emotional, moral and of course financial, during my postgraduate years, and this thesis would certainly not have come into being without them. 5 Table of Contents ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................................... 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .............................................................................................................................. 3 INTRODUCTION ............................................................................................................................................. 7 LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................................................................ 37 Adaptation as a Theory ................................................................................................................................ 37 Plot Summary of the Analysed Works in the Thesis in Chronological Order ............................................. 45 1. Mahmud Sabahi‘s Hamlet Narrates Hamlet (2009) ............................................................................ 46 2. Semih Celenk‘s Hamlet in Colour in Turkish (2004) .......................................................................... 53 3. Lyudmila S. Petrushevskaya‘s Hamlet, Act Null (2002) ..................................................................... 54 4. Sulayman Al-Bassam‘s The Al-Hamlet Summit (2002) ...................................................................... 56 5. Atila Pesyani‘s Gajari Coffee (2001) .................................................................................................. 62 6. Mostafa Rahimi‘s Hamlet (1993) ........................................................................................................ 68 7. Akbar Radi‘s Hamlet with Season Salad (1988) ................................................................................. 75 CHAPTER ONE: Global Family of Hamlets: Globalisation .......................................................................... 78 Introduction ................................................................................................................................................. 78 Globalisation and Theatrical Adaptations of Hamlet in Different Cultural Contexts ................................. 83 Adaptations of Hamlet in Different Cultural Contexts: Homogenisation, Heterogenisation and Glocalisation .............................................................................................................................................. 103 Adaptations of Hamlet in Different Cultural Contexts: Interculturalism .................................................. 129 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................................. 137 CHAPTER TWO: Adaptations of Hamlet in Different Cultural Contexts: Postmodernism and Beyond .... 140 Introduction ............................................................................................................................................... 140 Postmodernism .......................................................................................................................................... 145 Adaptations of Hamlet in Different Cultural Contexts: Politics, Irony, Metatheatre, Minimalism and Fragmentation ............................................................................................................................................ 150 Adaptations of Hamlet: Double Coding and Binary Oppositions ............................................................