This volume considers the linguistic complexities associated with Shakespeare’s presence in South Africa from 1801 to early twentieth-first century televisual updatings of the texts as a means of exploring individual and collective forms of identity. A case study approach demonstrates how Shakespeare’s texts are available for ideologically driven linguistic programs. Seeff introduces the African Theatre, Cape Town, in 1801, multilingual site of the first recorded performance of a Shakespeare play in Southern Africa where rival, amateur theatrical groups performed in turn, in English, Dutch, German, and French. Chapter 3 offers three vectors of a broadening Shakespeare diaspora in English, Afrikaans, and Setswana in the second half of the nineteenth century. Chapter 4 analyses André Brink’s Kinkels innie Kabel, a transposition of Shakespeare’s The Comedy of Errors into Kaaps, as a radical critique of apartheid’s obsession with linguistic and ethnic purity. Chapter 5 investigates John Kani’s performance of Othello as a Xhosa warrior chief with access to the ancient tradition of Xhosa storytellers. Shakespeare in Mzansi, a televisual miniseries uses black actors, vernacular languages, and local settings to Africanize Macbeth and reclaim a cross-cultural, multilingualism. An Afterword assesses the future of Shakespeare in a post-rainbow, decolonizing South Africa.  Global Sha Any reader interested in Shakespeare Studies, global Shakespeare, Shakespeare in performance, Shakespeare and appropriation, Shakespeare and language, Literacy Studies, race, and South African cultural history will be drawn to this book.
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Global ShaAny reader interested in Shakespeare Studies, global Shakespeare, Shakespeare in performance, Shakespeare and appropriation, Shakespeare and language, Literacy Studies, race, and South African cultural history will be drawn to this book.
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1. Introduction.- 2. The African Theatre, Cape Town, 1801.- 3. The Shakespeare Diaspora.- 4. André Brink's Kinkels innie Kabel: Political Vision and Linguistic Virtuosity.- 5. John Kani as Othello at the Market Theatre, Johannesburg.- 6. Shakespeare in Mzansi.- 7. Afterword.
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“Seeff follows the long and complicated search for South Africa’s Shakespeare, cataloging the efforts over two centuries of a multilingual, multiethnic group of theatre-makers to use Shakespeare to articulate different competing versions of South African-ness. What she finds along the way will interest South African theatre and performance scholars, Shakespeareans, and sociolinguists alike.” (Gibson Alessandro Cima, Theatre Journal, Vol. 72 (4), 2020)
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Focuses on key Shakespearean productions, two during the period of apartheid and one in a democratic South Africa, in order to explore the production of identity through linguistic practice Looks at linguistic history and how Shakespeare’s texts are harnessed in the service of promoting a linguistic program Combines a sociolinguistic approach with performance studies, Shakespeare Studies, the Shakespeare diaspora, South African Studies, history, Critical race studies, and cultural studies
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9783030086251
Publisert
2019-01-24
Utgiver
Vendor
Springer Nature Switzerland AG
Høyde
210 mm
Bredde
148 mm
Aldersnivå
Research, P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet

Forfatter

Biographical note

Adele Seeff  is an independent scholar and lecturer. From 1986 to 2011, she directed the Centre for Renaissance & Baroque Studies, University of Maryland, College Park. She established the conference series, “Attending to Early Modern Women,” co-edited seven volumes of conference proceedings, and co-founded the Early Modern Women Journal. Her research on Shakespeare and performance has appeared in academic journals and anthologies. She was born in Johannesburg, South Africa.