Character and the Supernatural in Shakespeare and Achebe

Kenneth Usongo received a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Denver, USA, and a doctorate in English literary studies from the University of Yaoundé 1, Cameroon. He is the author of Politics and Romance in Shakespeare’s Four Great Tragedies and Art and Political Thought in Bole Butake.

• Chapter One Contextualizing Shakespeare and AchebeChapter Two The Term SupernaturalChapter Three Shakespeare and the SupernaturalChapter Four Achebe and the SupernaturalChapter Five Shakespeare’s and Achebe’s Use of the Supernatural

"Kenneth Usongo has broken the boundaries of national and territorial restrictions and regionalism to explore the underlying cultural dispensations that unite us as humans-- the search for certainty and truth and the interconnectedness between the spiritual and the mundane that define and give meaning to life. He has put into palpable terms the seeming contradictions in Othello’s "I am not what I am," Macbeth’s the disappearing bearded weird sisters, Hamlet’s the ghost, the Igbo chi, the pythons, the yam, the western church, and the evil forest into the boiling cauldron of modern civilization. What comes out of Shakespeare/Achebe’s cauldron is the humbling picture of humankind’s indebtedness to the supernatural and warnings against excesses in pride, political power, ambition, greed, homicide, and vanity." Emmanuel N. Ngwang, Wiley College, Marshall, Texas, USA