“내가 바로 작가야!” = 여성 작가의 새로 쓰는 셰익스피어, 앤-메리 맥도널드의 『잘자 데스데모나 (잘잤니 줄리엣)』

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study aims to analyze Ann-Marie MacDonald's method of rewriting two of Shakespeare's most famous tragedies, Othello and Romeo and Juliet. MacDonald converts two tragedies into an exuberant comedy, Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet). This play not only revisits two narratives but also subverts their original genres by defusing the tragic elements and substituting them with comical ones. Pointing out that the reality is too contradictory to be fitted into the one-sided seriousness of tragedy, MacDonald presents as humorously inappropriate what these two tragedies has just represented as serious and consequential.
Erasing the boundaries between tragedy and comedy, MacDonald uncovers and displays a broader spectrum of gender behavior. She highlights the synonymousness of idealized womanhood with passivity and makes obvious the performative and ideological limitations of that construct. MacDonald's Desdemona is not like the one we're used to. She is not a doomed and helpless victim but an adventurous, aggressive and even bloodthirsty Amazon encouraging Constance's transformation from "a Mouse" to a self-confident, strong, independent woman. MacDonald's Juliet is randy and adventurous, hardly the emblem of purity and innocence we're accustomed to. With this extremely erotic Juliet, Constance fully embraces her own sexuality. In addition, MacDonald questions the assumption that heterosexuality is the norm by rendering both Romeo and Juliet fall in love with Constance with both in error about her gender.
In this story of a timid "Mouse" reclaiming the authorship of her own life, Macdonald appropriates the plots, characters, and very lines of Shakespeare making them her own. Her new story goes beyond the deconstruction of the texts that make up our cultural history to create new texts in which the old stories are re-imagined and reinterpreted from formerly excluded perspectives. It is Macdonald herself that claims "I'm the author!" declaring her independence form the Bard.