David  Maskell, M.A., D.Phil.

Emeritus Fellow of Oriel College

 

Research

Dr David Maskell specialises in combining the academic and practical aspects of theatre studies in Classics and Modern Languages, and African and Caribbean theatre in French. He has translated or adapted the following into English verse for performance in Oxford:

ANCIENT GREEK. Sophocles, Oedipus the King; Euripides, Bacchae (also performed at the International Youth Drama festival in Ancient Olympia, Greece in 2015)

LATIN. Ovid, Metamorphoses.

FRENCH. Le Jeu d’Adam;  La Châtelaine de Vergi;  Racine, Esther; Voltaire, Mahomet and Zaïre.

ITALIAN. Poliziano,  Orfeo; Ariosto, Orlando Furioso.

FRANCOPHONE. David Maskell has a special interest in African and Caribbean theatre in French and has collaborated with the Oxford Francophone theatre group in adaptations of Une Saison au Congo by Aimé Césaire, and of plays about Shaka Zulu by Léopold-Sédar Senghor, Seydou Badian Kouyaté, and Senouvou Agbota Zinsou.

His publications on theatrical performance and cross-cultural representation include:

Racine: A Theatrical Reading (Oxford, OUP, 1991)

'Racine and Shakespeare : a common language', Comparative Literature Studies, 30 (1993), 253-268.

'Tragédie et théâtralité dans la Psyché de Molière', Le Nouveau Moliériste, 3 (1996-1997)

'Orientalism subverted in Racine's Bérénice and Bajazet', in Eastern voyages, Western visions, ed. M. Topping (Oxford, Bern, New York: Peter Lang, 2004), pp. 91-112.

'Europe, Alterity and Fear in French Classical Drama' in El desig teatral d’Europa, ed. Victor Molina  and John London (Lleida: Punctum, 2013), pp. 59-81.