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This paper offers a comparative postcolonial reading of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora, texts separated by nearly three centuries yet united by a shared concern with identity, power, and marginalisation. Drawing on Edward Said, Homi Bhabha, Frantz Fanon, and Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, among other theorists, the study examines how Christian Venice and colonial India construct the “othered” figures of Shylock and Gora through religious, racial, and nationalist ideologies. It further considers the gendered dimension of power through Portia and Anandamoyi, and asks what it might mean to decolonise the interpretation of two canonical texts. Placing Shakespeare and Tagore in dialogue, the paper argues that both narratives depict oppression while also, in different measures, resisting and reformulating the ideologies that produce it.
Dr. Namita Chouhan. “Decolonising the Narrative: A Comparative Postcolonial Study of William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice and Rabindranath Tagore’s Gora.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 4, August 2026, pp. 1095-1109. DOI, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n4.67.
Open Access · CC BY 4.0 · Crossref DOI ·
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