ABSTRACT

Studies on William Shakespeare‟s writings have been fragmentary concentrating on one or two   aspects   of   Shakespeare‟s   concern   with   aestheticizing   human   values   without   laying emphasis on his sources of inspiration. This paper is a comparative study of some of Shakespeare‟s plays through an elaborate, if subliminal, intertextual dialogue with several key epic poems by Al-Moutanabi. This paper strives to foreground the trope of  anxiety   of   influence‟   (Harold   Bloom)   unearthing   links   between   AlMoutanabi   and Shakespeare.   The   literary   dialogue   between   both   writers   clears   the   ground   for   a   strong assumption of intertextual evocations. In  this   regard,   Khalil   Matran   asserts that: “on the whole, there  is  in  the  writing   of  Shakespeare   a   Beduin   spirit,   which  is  expressed  in  the continuous return to innate nature” (8). Accordingly, I must proceed on three levels: I must first situate Shakespeare‟s and Al-Moutanabi‟s writings in a broader field of intertextuality by dissecting   convergences   between   their   texts.   Second,   my   comparative approach will elucidate Shakespeare‟s divergences at the level of generic affiliations. Finally, I will appraise the trope of „anxiety of influence‟ since it confers cross-cultural characterisitics on Shakespeare‟s writings.