Context and Co-text in Bernard Ogini’s Hamlet for Pidgin (Oga Pikin)

This article examines a phenomenon that may trigger a resurgence in the pleasure of reading or watching performances of Shakespeare’s plays in Nigeria: adaptation and translation into Naija (previously Nigerian Pidgin). Specifically, it examines how the Naija translation Hamlet for Pidgin (Oga Pikin) is prototypical for such a revival. The study adopts a comparative approach and explicates how anaphoric reformulation (AR), cataphoric reformulation (CR) and exophoric reformulation (ER) condition the translation’s peculiar lexico-semantic choices in terms of borrowing, reduplicatives, calquing and the like. These forms enter a networked relationship within the co-text and context to bring about a contemporary equivalent to Hamlet. Readers and audiences extract meaning through clues such as collocation, background knowledge and other linking strategies provided consciously or unconsciously by the author/translator. The article concludes that this translation is also significant for its shift away from the cathartic effect of Shakespearean tragedy and towards a comic mode that has greater popular appeal.

Populist parties shifting the political discourse? A case study of the Economic Freedom Fighters in South Africa

ABSTRACTThis article examines the use of populist discourse in South African politics. We investigate speeches of leaders from the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and opposition parties, the Democratic Alliance (DA) and the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). We find that the EFF consistently employs populist appeals, while both the incumbent ANC and official opposition DA largely refrain. Our longitudinal analysis allows an examination of fluctuation across party leaders and electoral cycles, and illustrates that neither the ANC nor the DA have modified their political discourses in light of a rising populist challenger. However, there is some evidence that the two most dominant parties have reformed their programmatic offerings and behaviour in an attempt to compete with the EFF's popular appeal. The South African case offers important insights into the study of oppositional populism on the African continent, and a window into how major political parties may respond to emerging populist contenders.

A Likely Story: The Da Vinci Code as Work on Myth

<p>Theory of myth is used as an explanatory framework within which to explore the enormous and controversial popular appeal of the novel The Da Vinci Code, first published in 2003. The Da Vinci Code is a site of contestation between truth and falsity. Modernity has used the category of myth to contain and control false stories that claim to be true. Myth is characterised here as story-with-significance but also as story believed by people other than scholars and the guardians of legitimate culture. The novel reinserts story into religious history, finding 'natural' significances to replace those progressively exposed and expunged by scholarship and liberal theology. Code's major themes, the sacred feminine and the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, endorse popular knowledge about religion, inheritance, identity, community and gender, knowledge that is threatened by detraditionalisation, feminism, and modernity's emphasis on the autonomous individual. The bloodline myth's move into the category of fiction further blurs the boundaries between the legitimately true and the mythically false.</p>

A Likely Story: The Da Vinci Code as Work on Myth

<p>Theory of myth is used as an explanatory framework within which to explore the enormous and controversial popular appeal of the novel The Da Vinci Code, first published in 2003. The Da Vinci Code is a site of contestation between truth and falsity. Modernity has used the category of myth to contain and control false stories that claim to be true. Myth is characterised here as story-with-significance but also as story believed by people other than scholars and the guardians of legitimate culture. The novel reinserts story into religious history, finding 'natural' significances to replace those progressively exposed and expunged by scholarship and liberal theology. Code's major themes, the sacred feminine and the bloodline of Jesus and Mary Magdalene, endorse popular knowledge about religion, inheritance, identity, community and gender, knowledge that is threatened by detraditionalisation, feminism, and modernity's emphasis on the autonomous individual. The bloodline myth's move into the category of fiction further blurs the boundaries between the legitimately true and the mythically false.</p>

Plays within Songs: Sanqu Songs from Literary Refinement (ya) to Popular Appeal (su)

Through detailed analysis of several case studies, this essay investigates a special form of sanqu 散曲 song, namely, songs that embed references to dramas (quzhong daixi 曲中帶戲). A long song suite (changtao 長套) by Yuan author Sun Jichang 孫季昌 (fl. 14th century) is the best-known example of a pastiche of zaju play titles and dramatic protagonists intended to stimulate and guide readers' imagination. When late Ming dramatist Shen Jing 沈璟 (1553–1610) imitated Sun's pastiche song suite, he painstakingly sought to disrupt the obvious association between lyric and invoked play in an appeal to the literati aesthetic of lyrical indirection. Another, shorter song suite from the Ming, this one by an anonymous author, incorporates chuanqi play titles with little literary embellishment, catering to popular tastes. Finally, set to the tunes “Pipo yu” 劈破玉 and “Gua zhen'er” 掛真兒, popular songs featuring chuanqi play titles appear in three late Ming miscellanies. As these songs describe their source play's main protagonists and plot elements, they may be seen as expressing the voice of commoners and at the same time promoting ethical values. Taken together, these examples illustrate that it was not unusual for sanqu songs to incorporate dramatic references. This blending of song and drama can be traced to the arbitrary Yuan dynasty definition of yuefu 樂府 (literally, “Music Bureau songs”) and its relationship with sanqu songs. Thus the heterogeneous and inclusive nature characteristic of sanqu songs can be viewed in a new light.

Popular Dictatorships

Electoral autocracies – regimes that adopt democratic institutions but subvert them to rule as dictatorships – have become the most widespread, resilient and malignant non-democracies today. They have consistently ruled over a third of the countries in the world, including geopolitically significant states like Russia, Turkey, Venezuela, Egypt, Indonesia, Nigeria and Pakistan. Challenging conventional wisdom, Popular Dictators shows that the success of electoral authoritarianism is not due to these regimes' superior capacity to repress, bribe, brainwash and manipulate their societies into submission, but is actually a product of their genuine popular appeal in countries experiencing deep political, economic and security crises. Promising efficient, strong-armed rule tempered by popular accountability, elected strongmen attract mass support in societies traumatized by turmoil, dysfunction and injustice, allowing them to rule through the ballot box. Popular Dictators argues that this crisis legitimation strategy makes electoral authoritarianism the most significant threat to global peace and democracy.

Education, Citizenship, and National Identity in the Sahel

At independence, Sahelian states inherited educational systems rooted in the colonial French model and based on secularism or laïcité. Both during and after colonialism, these formal public educational systems found little popular appeal, and indeed often faced clear resistance at the popular level. By contrast, a parallel system of Islamic education thrived, expanded, and evolved in the region, ranging from traditional Quranic schools to more modern Franco-Arabic schools. In the 1990s, a number of factors began to call into question the viability of this bifurcated educational system. This chapter surveys the trajectory of educational systems in the Muslim societies of the Sahel, and analyzes the forces shaping new hybrid models that are emerging. It examines how reformed educational systems are evolving in ways that diverge from the historical secular model with the potential for producing new models of citizenship deeply imbued with religious identities. The chapter offers an interpretation of the longer-term implications of these changes for national identity and citizenship in a changing Sahel.

Werner Bergengruen (d. 1964) in Conversation with the Middle Ages: Significant Contributions to Twentieth-Century Medievalism

Medievalism has experienced an enormous popularity in the last decades, if not century, but the specific contributions by the Baltic German author Werner Bergengruen have not yet received full attention. In light of a selection of his novellas, we can identify him as a meaningful respondent to medieval themes, ideas, concepts, and values which he dealt with rather creatively, employing them for his own ethical, religious, or spiritual musings. Studying Bergengruen’s novellas makes it possible not only to familiarize ourselves once again with one of the most popular German authors from the mid-twentieth century who has unfairly lost in popular appeal maybe since ca. 1970. Through his novellas we also gain intriguing keys to open innovative perspectives toward a variety of literary and didactic texts from the Middle Ages, which are not simply imitated here, but emerge as critical catalysts or sources for Bergengruen’s own reflections on timeless human issues.

Collective memory and the populist cause: The Ulucanlar Prison Museum in Turkey

This article focuses on how political actors appropriate the past by utilizing collective traumas for their populist cause. We demonstrate how the Ulucanlar Prison Museum in Turkey and the oppression of military interventions, for which it served as a backyard, became a tool for the AKP’s (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi-Justice and Development Party) populist agenda. Through a particular narration of history embedded in the museum, the AKP aimed to forge an internal frontier within the society between an envisioned homogenous body of people on the one hand and the elite on the other. Situating itself as the people’s authentic voice against this elite, the AKP tried to further its popular appeal and legitimize its extension of power. What appeared as coming to terms with the past was instead the instrumentalization of the past for a singular political agenda, eager to remove the complexities and pluralism of the past for the sake of telling a politically useful story.

Humour in audiovisual translation: Theories and applications

The first 20 years of the 21st century have witnessed an explosion of audiovisual translation (AVT) products. Unlimited as to time, space and economic status, the widespread use of online streaming media has made AVT entertainment a feature of daily life. Among the various genres, comedy – with the laughter, happiness, and social commentary it brings – continues to enjoy popular appeal. Humour is indeed a universal phenomenon; its presentation in audiovisual products understandably attracts wide scholarly attention, and Margherita Dore’s monograph, Humour in audiovisual translation: Theories and applications, is one of the latest works to explore it.