Buying Our Lives with a Riddle: Adaptation as the "Female-Other" Perspective
Abstract
Abstract
The existence of a strong relationship between gender and class as well as other patterns of social inequality in African societies has been a major cause of conflict arising from human relationships. Myth and history have also been identified as some of the ways through which this social imbalance is promoted. Overtime various methods have been adopted in combating the malaise; one of such is literature. Such sensibility has equally found expression in adaptation and/or appropriation.This paper focuses on Ahmed Yerima’s Otaelo, adapted from Shakespeare’s original text Othello, deployed as a site of engagement to confront the condition of the Other, through recourse to feminist theory. The paper also finds in Euripides’s Medea a material and prototype dramaturgy for basis of argument, which underlines patriarchy as a significant male-centred practice that militates against women’s right and freedom.Â
- [Keywords: adaptation, appropriation, culture, gender, otherness, patriarchy, Shakespeare.]
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