Venetian Masks: Intercultural Allusion, Transcultural Identity, And Two Othellos (Cultural Identity in Works by William Shakespeare, Caryl Phillips‪)‬

This article explores the use of intercultural allusion in personal narratives of transcultural identity. Some theoretical considerations are brought to bear on Othello's interculturally allusive narrative of personal identity in Shakespeare's play, showing how that narrative serves pragmatically to broker Othello's acceptance by Venetian society. However, at the play's tragic finale Othello's mask slips, thus throwing into doubt the possibility of transcultural identity. The paper then considers how a contemporary transcultural writer, Caryl Phillips, alludes to the Shakespearean prototype of transcultural identity, and to what effect. While, as a figment of the European imagination which ennobles an ethnic quisling, it is a prototype that Phillips would wish to rewrite and/or deconstruct, he is in fact unable to do so for, malgre lui, his own allusive frame reveals him to be more European than he might care to think. Key words: intercultural allusion, identity narrative, Shakespeare, Caryl Phillips, Othello.