The Real World Represented": Identity Politics and Diverse Representation in Shakespeare and Young Adult Lit"

Abstract

“The Real World Represented”: Identity Politics and Diverse Representation in Shakespeare and Young Adult Lit examines how YA authors of the twenty-first century use fan practices to explore identity and expand diverse representation in their adaptations of Shakespeare for adolescent raders. The first chapter of “The Real World Represented” examines novels and short stories that adapt Hamlet and Macbeth to feature adolescent female lead characters. Questions of masculine identity dominate both Hamlet and Macbeth, which are also both among the most frequently taught plays in high school English classes. Through female focused adaptations, YA authors provide their young readers the opportunity to experience and understand the events of each play from young, female perspectives, as well as affirm that these perspectives are just as valuable as those of male characters. My analysis of a variety of novels, including Caroline B Cooney’s Enter Three Witches (2007), Lisa Klein’s Ophelia (2006) and Lady Macbeth’s Daughter (2009), and Robin Talley’s As I Descended (2016) demonstrates the many ways YA authors respond to the problematic aspects of female representation within Shakespeare’s works and empower young female readers by including their voices in some of his most well-known and frequently encountered plays. The second chapter explores the element of romantic love in YA adaptations of Shakespeare. Several YA adaptations of Romeo and Juliet, such as Jenny Trout’s Such Sweet Sorrow (2014) and Melinda Taub’s Still Star-Crossed (2013) take inspiration from Shakespeare’s characterization of the young couple as “star-crossed” and present romantic love as a powerful and inevitable force for their young characters. Within the last few years, authors of these adaptations, including Rachel Caine (Prince of Shadows, 2014) and Barbara Dee (Star-Crossed, 2017) have used this idea of love to equate the romantic experiences of LGBTQ+ teens with those of their heterosexual peers in terms of legitimacy and importance. Romeo and Juliet holds a place of high regard in our cultural consciousness as a work that epitomizes romantic love, and adapting this play through the perspectives of LGBTQ+ characters sends the message that love is not dependent upon gender or sexual orientation, thus validating the relationships of teens who identify this way. The third chapter of “The Real World Represented” analyzes YA adaptations of Shakespeare that address the issue of race. Similarly to adaptations surveyed in previous chapters, Grace Tiffany’s (2005) novels, Ariel and The Turquoise Ring, McKelle George’s Speak Easy, Speak Love, and Cat Winterson’s 2016 novel The Steep and Thorny Way use several different approaches to retell Shakespeare’s The Tempest, The Merchant of Venice, Much Ado About Nothing, and Hamlet, respectively, from the points of view of racial or ethnic minority characters. These adaptations bring racial injustices to the forefront and include them in the many important struggles that shape human experience through their connection to Shakespeare. These Shakespearean works are, in turn, rejuvenated through their demonstrated relevance to multiple racial and ethnic identities and diversified to reflect our modern society as it actually exists. The final two chapters of my dissertation shift focus slightly onto the formats that encourage more active participation from young adult readers and audiences, including webcomics and social media sites that thrive on reader and user participation, “choose-your-own-adventure” style comic books that invite readers to select what happens next from multiple options throughout the book, and fanfiction, or retellings of Shakespeare’s works created by fans and shared for fun and community rather than profit. Chapter four examines sequential art adaptations of Shakespeare, including the comic book series Kill Shakespeare and No Holds Bard, which break from the realistic picture that scholars have given us of who Shakespeare was and present imaginative characterizations of him and the context in which he wrote his famous plays and poems. These series remove the rigid constructs often placed around how we think of Shakespeare and allow for young adult readers to expand their impressions of him and by extension, his works. This chapter also considers “choose-your-own-adventure” style comic books that invite readers to select what happens next from multiple options throughout the book, and the web comic Good Tickle Brain, which adapts Shakespeare’s plays in humorous and irreverent ways and serves to mitigate some of the intimidation young adults often feel when faced with reading and understanding Shakespeare. Chapter five engages with fanfiction, and the ways in which authors of fanfiction, many of them young adults, use the medium to shape Shakespeare to question and challenge aspects of his works that they find problematic and reflect their own needs, desires, and identities. Overall, these Shakespearean adaptations use forms of media outside of novels and short stories to open pathways to more creative interpretation of and even active engagement with Shakespeare’s works, providing a sense of empowerment through autonomy for young adults.