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Loading... Shakespeare in Swahililand: In Search of a Global Poetby Edward Wilson-Lee
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. Part travelogue, part history, interspersed with bits of memoir, this was an intriguing book. The author traces Shakespeare readings and performances in East Africa from the early European "explorers" to the present day. Fascinating look at how Shakespeare's text has served a variety of purposes for everyone from colonial administrators to independence leaders and in into today's East African literary scene. ( ) no reviews | add a review
Beginning with Victorian-era expeditions in which the Complete Works of Shakespeare were often the sole reading material carried into the interior of the continent, the Bard became a vital touchstone both for colonizers and the colonized. His plays were printed by liberated slaves as some of the first texts in Swahili, were performed by Indian laborers while they built the Uganda railroad, were used to argue for native rights, and were translated by intellectuals, revolutionaries, and independence-movement leaders. Wilson-Lee tallies Shakespeare's unlikely yet profound emergence and continued presence in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia, and South Sudan, and discovers overwhelming evidence that Shakespeare's works provide a key insight into cultural development throughout the region. -- Adapted from jacket flap. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)822.3Literature English English drama Elizabethan 1558-1625LC ClassificationRatingAverage:
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