Becoming Cleopatra: The Shifting Image of an Icon - Softcover

Royster, F.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1403961093 ISBN 13: 9781403961099

Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003

Synopsis

Cleopatra. Sexy, sultry, political, and racially ambiguous. Moving fluidly from Shakespeare's England to contemporary LA, Francesca Royster looks at the performance of race and sexuality in a wide range of portrayals of that icon of dangerous female sexuality, Cleopatra. Royster begins with Shakespeare's original appropriation of Plutarch, and then moves on to analyze performances of the Cleopatra icon by Josephine Baker, Elizabeth Taylor, Pam Grier (Cleopatra Jones) and Queen Latifah (in Set It Off ). Royster argues that Cleopatra highlights a larger cultural anxiety about women, sexuality, and race.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

"Like its subject, Becoming Cleopatra is provocative and endlessly fascinating; unlike her, it is ultimately satisfying. At last we have a book as witty, complex and liberating as Cleopatra herself." - Kim F. Hall, Thomas F. X. Mullarkey Chair in Literature, Fordham University

"Starting with Josephine Baker in the 1920s and extending to the search for a racially recognizable villain after 9/11, Royster blurs the boundaries between history and the present, between the academy and popular culture, between critical analysis and personal testimony. In this thoroughly engaging book 'Cleopatra' loses its fixity as a noun and becomes a verb." - Bruce R. Smith, author of The Acoustic World of Early Modern England and Shakespeare and Masculinity
|"Like its subject, Becoming Cleopatra is provocative and endlessly fascinating; unlike her, it is ultimately satisfying. At last we have a book as witty, complex and liberating as Cleopatra herself." - Kim F. Hall, Thomas F. X. Mullarkey Chair in Literature, Fordham University"Starting with Josephine Baker in the 1920s and extending to the search for a racially recognizable villain after 9/11, Royster blurs the boundaries between history and the present, between the academy and popular culture, between critical analysis and personal testimony. In this thoroughly engaging book 'Cleopatra' loses its fixity as a noun and becomes a verb." - Bruce R. Smith, author of The Acoustic World of Early Modern England and Shakespeare and Masculinity

About the Author

FRANCESCA ROYSTER is Associate Professor of English at DePaul University, where she teaches courses on Shakespeare, film, and black feminism. She is one of the leading young African American feminist Shakespeare scholars.

Edition details

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 1403961093
• ISBN 13: 9781403961099
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 271