Keynote: Global Dissemination of Shakespeare Criticism, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium

Encountering intercultural Shakespeare criticism is similar to listening to interweaving parts in a fugue, a contrapuntal musical piece that introduces a melody through one instrument and then develops that same melody through other instruments successively, argues Alexa Alice Joubin during her keynote address at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, June 27, 2023.

This illustrated presentation considers such questions as:

-- What are the ethics of cross-cultural criticism?
-- How do we handle uneven valuation of Shakespeare?
-- How might criticism become a practice of cultural reparation?

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00:28 What is criticism?
01:58 What is Shakespearean criticism?
02:58 Nordic critical traditions
04:33 Translation as criticism: Othello
06:18 Critical edition as criticism: New Oxford Shakespeare
06:52 New Variorum Shakespeare
08:34 JSTOR Understanding Series
09:23 New Variorum Shakespeare’s new mandates
10:16 Why track international circulation of criticism?
10:49 Henry V in France
12:09 Merchant of Venice in the Middle East
14:15 New Variorum Shakespeare Midsummer Night’s Dream
15:18 World Shakespeare Bibliography
18:15 Rewriting as criticism: Charles & Mary Lamb
19:57 Liang Shiqiu’s Sonnets
20:33 Boomerang criticism
22:57 Ninagawa’s cherry blossom Macbeth
24:45 Kenneth Branagh’s As You Like It
26:48 Aberrant decoding, Umberto Eco
28:30 New questions
29:41 New solutions
30:53 Robben Island “Bible,” South Africa
34:08 John Kani’s Othello and Caliban
37:03 Theory of Polyphony
39:00 Oh Tae-suk’s The Tempest
45:56 Conclusion
49:00 Jena-Luc Nancy on community

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Global circulation of Shakespeare criticism is both an exercise in ethics and in cultural agency. We need to go beyond questions of mutual influence among only scholarly critics to consider how new audiences and new forms of criticism are shaping the Shakespeare industry.

The conference on the International Translation and Circulation Of Shakespeare Criticism was hosted by Professor Raphaël Ingelbien and co-organized by Carmen Reisinger.