Shakespeare & the Arab World (co-edited with Katherine Hennessey) (original) (raw)
Related papers
"Arab Shakespeares - Ten Years Later" Critical Survey Special issue guest editors' introduction
When the first Critical Survey special issue on Arab Shakespeares (CS 19:3, Winter 2007) came out nearly a decade ago, the topic was a curiosity. There existed no up-to-date monograph in English on Arab theatre, let alone on Arab Shakespeare. Few Arabic plays had been translated into English. Few British or American theatregoers had seen a play in Arabic. In the then tiny but fast-growing field of international Shakespeare appropriation studies (now ‘Global Shakespeare’) there was a great post-9/11 hunger to know more about the Arab world but also a lingering prejudice that Arab interpretations of Shakespeare would necessarily be derivative or crude, purely local in value. Nearly a decade later, this special issue offers a variety of perspectives on the history and role of Arab Shakespeare translation, production, adaptation, and criticism. With two essays and an interview focused on the twentieth century, we have avoided an exclusive and ahistorical focus on the present. We have also striven to strike a balance between internationally and locally focused Arab/ic Shakespeare appropriations, and between Shakespeare’s plays and sonnets. In addition to Egyptian and Palestinian theatre, our contributors examine everything from an Omani performance in Qatar and an Upper Egyptian television series to the origin of the sonnets and an English-language novel about the Lebanese civil war. They address materials produced in several languages: literary Arabic (fuṣḥā), Egyptian colloquial Arabic (‘ammiyya), Moroccan colloquial Arabic (darija), Swedish, French, and English. They include veteran scholars, directors, and translators as well as emerging scholars from diverse disciplinary and geographic locations, a testament to the vibrancy of this field.
Shakespeare in Arabic Translations and Adaptations: The Search for Dramatic Canon
The present paper is an attempt to highlight the corpus of Shakespeare in Arabic translations and adaptations. More recently, Hamlet and Richard III, for instance, have been re-cast, re-set and recreated in the Arab world in numerous adaptations and appropriations; attesting to the multiplicity rather than the uniqueness of a Shakespearean text. Although Hamlet and Richard III seem to do nothing with colonial/postcolonial discourse, the paper aims at finding out the curiosities behind and the growing interest in translating and appropriating such texts. Seemingly, by invoking Shakespeare, Arabs do not necessarily respond to a former colonizer or intend to be part of the postcolonial model of writing-back; rather they use Shakespeare as a text- a case to be examined whether such use is in pursuit of canon or it signals the inequality between languages. Beyond a binary relationship between the original texts and the rewritings, the paper also problematizes and questions the validity of appropriating Shakespeare and using his works as a vehicle to muse in contemporary issues of the Arab world.
Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance
Since Najib al-Haddad and Tanyusʻ Abdu’s first Arabic versions of Romeo and Juliet and Hamlet at the end of the 19th century, the reception of Shakespeare in the Arab world has gone through a process of adaptation, Arabization, and translation proper. We consider the process of Arabization / domestication of Shakespeare’s plays since Najib al-Haddad’s adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and Tanyusʻ Abdu’s adaptation of Hamlet, to the achievements of Khalīl Mutran and Muhammad Hamdi. We underline, as particular examples of Shakespeare’s appropriation, the literary response of Ali Ahmed Bakathir, Muhammad al-Maghut and Mamduh Udwan, with a particular stress on Khazal al-Majidi and his adaptations of Shakespeare’s plays. All these writers reposition Shakespeare’s plays in an entirely different cultural space.
Arab Shakespeares at the World Shakespeare Congress
Shakespeare Survey 71, 2018
This chapter surveys contemporary Shakespearean performances across the Arab world. It highlights the diversity of the region as a whole, and the variety of its translators', authors', and theater practitioners' approaches to Shakespearean texts and references. To illustrate this range of adaptive and performative strategies, the chapter examines in detail three recent productions inspired by Shakespeare's plays: Richard II by the Ashtar Theater Company of Ramallah (Palestine), The Dark Night by Omani playwright and actor Ahmad al-Izki, and British-Kuwaiti playwright and director Sulayman Al Bassam's The Speaker's Progress.
King Lear on the Arabic Stage: Linguistic, Social and Cultural Considerations
Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 2013
This paper discusses the challenges translators face when rendering Shakespeare's King Lear into Arabic. Issues considered include metaphor, diction, classical references, and social titles. Our strategy depends on finding out examples of the distinctive features of Shakespearean style and comparing them with their counterpart s in two Arabic translations of the play by Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and Fatima Moussa Mahmoud. Comparisons reflect various problems translators face when conveying Shakespearian language into Arabic. For example, some imagery, especially personification of abstract ideas, is either absent or modified. Such deletions and changes render the target text less effective. Translators also adopt different approaches in translating classical references relating to Roman gods. While Jabra adopts foreignization as he keeps the feel of the source text by transliterating a number of these references, Mahmoud naturalizes them by giving Arabic paraphrases. The advantages and pitfalls of each technique are evaluated to find out what aspects of the ST are rendered into Arabic and which ones are not given priority. Contextual factors involved in the decision making process are discussed to illuminate the complex nature of translation. Problems of translating social titles appear when one finds that the same title is given different renderings in different parts of the play. Shakespearean diction causes certain problems due to the absence of one-to-one word equivalence. The need to take audience's social and cultural background into consideration makes translators avoid literal renderings. Explanations and better renderings are suggested to provide the Arab audience with a better access to Shakespeare and enrich translators' knowledge of their multifaceted task.
Arabic Adaptations of Shakespeare and Postcolonial Theory
Critical Survey, 2013
Building on what has already been documented in related scholarship concerning this topic, this article will look into facets of postcolonial theory vis-à-vis appropriations and adaptations of the plays of Shakespeare in Arabic. In doing so, the article will compare known postcolonial 'Shakespeares', and Arabic appropriations of his plays. It will comment on the postcolonial aspects of these plays and show whether Arab dramatists have been 'writing back', so to speak, in response to the colonial experience. The article addresses the following questions: first, do Arab playwrights deal with postcolonial issues in their appropriations of Shakespeare? Second, to what extent have Arab playwrights used Shakespeare to 'strike' at colonialism? Third, are Arab playwrights aware of postcolonial theory and discourse? And fourth, what is the nature of the Arabic contribution to postcolonial discourse? Although the treatment of Shakespeare in Arabic literature, especially drama and poetry, has been considered elsewhere, this particular approach to the Bard is relatively new. The article contends that there are postcolonial appropriations of Shakespeare in Arabic, which need to be properly investigated and commented upon with reference to postcolonial literary theory. Most Arab countries fell under European colonisation after the demise of the Ottoman Empire and the dismemberment of its territories in the aftermath of the First World War. Egypt, the Sudan, Palestine, Trans-Jordan and Iraq were directly colonised by Britain. Arab North African countries, namely Tunisia, Algeria, Mauritania and Morocco, and Syria and Lebanon were colonised by France. And Libya fell under Italy. However, unlike colonised countries such as India, Nigeria and the Caribbean islands, English was never imposed as a first or second language in British-occupied Arab provinces: in these
Critical Literrary Studies, 2024
The present paper deals with the historical overview and the reception of William Shakespeare’s Sonnets in contemporary Iran. The authors examine the chronology of Persian translations of Shakespeare’s Sonnets (both scattered and book-length ones) during a century which is a considerable period of time in the examination of the reception of any author in another culture. As poetry is not the most popular genre in Persian translation, the Persian translations of William Shakespeare’s Sonnets suffered from a lot of fluctuations. It was in the latter part of the nineteenth century, a turning-point in the history of the country, that Shakespeare was introduced into Iranian audience for the first time. It started with scattered translations and ended in book-length ones. This study indicates early Persian interest in Shakespeare’s Sonnets which was followed by a lull. The reason behind it was two-fold: the translation of foreign poetry was dominated by French and Russian languages, and the rich tradition of Persian poetry does not feel the need to translate foreign poetry. The reception of Shakespeare’s Sonnets was followed by renewed interest in 1998-2017 and finally book-length translations began to thrive. All in all, Shakespeare’s Sonnets did not have a great influence on Persian poetry, as it was expected.