King Lear and Mao’s China, with Nan Z. Da

Folger Shakespeare Library: Shakespeare Unlimited

Folger Shakespeare Library

Arts

4.7 • 837 Ratings

🗓️ 19 May 2025

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Nan Z. Da, in her book The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear, finds unsettling parallels between Shakespeare’s play and 20th-century China under Mao Zedong. Da, a literature professor at Johns Hopkins University, weaves together personal history and literary analysis to reveal how King Lear reflects—and even anticipates—the emotional and political horrors of authoritarian regimes. From public punishments to desperate displays of flattery, from state paranoia to family betrayal, she shows how Shakespeare’s tragedy resonates with the lived experiences of generations shaped by Maoism. She joins us to discuss the story of her family in Mao’s China and why Lear may be Shakespeare’s most “Chinese” play. Nan Z. Da is an associate professor of English at Johns Hopkins University. Prior to that, she taught for nine years at the University of Notre Dame. She is the author of Intransitive Encounters: Sino-US Literatures and the Limits of Exchange and co-editor of the Thinking Literature series.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From the Folger Shakespeare Library, this is Shakespeare Unlimited.
0:07.3	I'm Farah Kareem Cooper, the Folger Director.
0:12.3	Shakespeare is endlessly adaptable.
0:15.4	With a few costume choices and a fresh backdrop,
0:18.7	directors can turn a 400-year-old play into a contemporary satire
0:23.0	or political commentary. Dress up Othello in fatigues or Julius Caesar in a suit and tie,
0:30.7	and you've given the audience a new way to understand a familiar character. You may also
0:36.7	have set off a controversy.
0:39.7	Nan Z. Da teaches literature at Johns Hopkins University.
0:44.5	Da has written an original and deeply personal interpretation
0:48.3	of King Lear.
0:50.3	In her new book, The Chinese Tragedy of King Lear,
0:54.0	Da draws analogies between the play
0:56.0	and her own family's experience living under Chairman Mao.
1:00.6	In her telling, Shakespeare's tragedy anticipates the authoritarian horrors of the 20th century.
1:08.5	Reading her book, you could easily imagine a director staging Lear with this fresh cultural
1:14.0	context in mind.
1:16.2	Here's Barbara Bogave in conversation with Nan Da.
1:21.7	When did it first occur to you that King Lear lines up in some way with Maoist history and your own family's
1:29.0	experience of it? Well, you know, I was taught the most curious part of Lear in college by a professor
1:36.5	at the University of Chicago. And he had pointed out to me what I say in the introduction,
1:43.8	which is that there's something wrong with
	...

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