the different western perception of the oriental moor in the renaissance and the twentieth century: shakespeare's othello and tayeb salih's season of migration to the north: a post-colonial critique

This paper comparatively explores the different experience of the Muslim Orient - namely, Othello in Shakespeare's Othello (1604) and Mustafa Saeed and the narrator in Salih's Season of Migration to the North (1966) - in the West. It aims at relocating the transformation of the discourse of Orientalism from Renaissance, as represented by Shakespeare's Othello, to the post-eighteenth century, as represented by Salih's Season of Migration to the North. By contrasting the West and the Crescent, from power relations' vantage, this study highlights the historical difference of the western perception of the Orient from a colonizer, liberator, and guide to the West, as in Shakespeare's Othello, to a colonized subject, as in the characters of Mustafa Saeed and the narrator in Season of Migration. This paper bridges the gap left by modern scholarship which either focuses only on applying post-colonial theory on Salih's novel or neglects its resonance to Shakespeare's Othello in terms of power relations' vantage. Salih's novel laments, rather than deconstructs, the Renaissance Shakespearean powerful Moor, as represented by Othello in Shakespeare's Othello.