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This article discusses the intersection between reproduction, futurity, and disability in the paratexts of early modern books. In their introductions and dedications, early modern books often use reproductive metaphors, describing an author's book as their child. These metaphors express cultural attitudes toward sexuality, reproduction, and futurity. Many such metaphors in the era suggest that the book in question might be metaphorically maimed or disfigured: while this rhetoric could certainly be ableist, reproductive metaphors were not always used to further a fantasy of a hetero-able-bodied futurity. Using sexuality studies and disability studies as lenses through which to analyze how bodies' sexual and reproductive potentials are imagined by social and political discourse, this article focuses on John Florio's 1603 English translation of Michel de Montaigne's Essays , in which Florio describes translation as inherently defective and disfiguring, to argue that Florio's paratexts build on the content of Montaigne's Essays to queer and crip the heteronormative and ableist fantasy of producing only able-bodied (book) children who normatively inherit their (author) parents' legacies and carry these legacies into a future that mirrors the present. Florio's description of translation resonates with Montaigne's own capacious understanding of sexuality, bodily variance, and futurity, as Florio's translation invites its English readers into a queer-crip orientation to the centrality of disability in community. This article invites further consideration of book production and authorial legacy as frameworks in which writers, editors, and readers negotiated expectations for reproduction, futurity, and disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Holy Quran: Text, Translation and Commentary by ʿAbdullah Yūsuf ʿAlī (1872–1953) was prepared for daʿwa purposes, to spread the message and guidance of Islam in the English language. The subsequent editorial changes to this translation made in editions published decades later problematise the use of translation in propagating a particular interpretative framework and reflect developments in the practice of daʿwa and in interpretive methodologies during the second half of the twentieth century. This article argues that these interventions in Yusuf Ali's original translation were less to do with the English rendition of the text, and more to do with the paratext that structures the text and filters the experience of the reader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

GA 424 is an important Byzantine manuscript of Acts and the Catholic Epistles, the Pauline Epistles, and Revelation featuring surrounding commentary and various apparatus bound together with numerous non-biblical texts. This article identifies GA 250 as a direct copy (Abschrift) of 424's biblical text in both content and layout. While most of the other material was also copied, it was changed, reformatted, and edited in ways that point to a conscious effort at producing a revised edition. Beyond the evidence to support understanding GA 250 as a copy of GA 424, the ability to use GA 250 to reconstruct lost original text in GA 424 is explored, their dates are reconsidered, and desiderata are offered for further investigating the evolution between the manuscripts and their location within their family of manuscripts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among all the English translations of Liaozhai Zhiyi, Giles' and Minford's translations received the most reviews from Western readers. Their translations are rich in peritexts, which make up a large proportion of the two translations. Based on Genette's Paratexts theory and Batchelor's latest research in this field, this article examines the two translations' peritext strategy, main functions, and efficacy in the reception of Liaozhai Zhiyi with a view to seeing the roles that two types of peritexts play in the dissemination and reception of the book in English world. Looking closer to the two translations' peritext strategies, including covers, acknowledgments, prefaces, introductions, notes, illustrations, and appendices, the author summarizes five main functions of the peritexts: to reveal to some extent the translator's translating aims, to show the commissioner's peritext strategies, to spread Chinese culture, and to consciously or unconsciously manifest socio-cultural context. In addition, the article, through contrastively analyzing readers' reviews of two translations' peritexts, concludes that the efficacy of the peritexts in Minford's translation is much better than that in Giles' translation, which means that the former may, to a large degree, help promote the reception of Liaozhai Zhiyi, while the latter may not. It is also anticipated that the research pattern can be used in the study of the roles peritexts and epitexts play in the reception of a wider genre of Chinese works so as to facilitate the going-global of Chinese works and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay offers a novel framework for the definition of biblical wisdom as a genre by suggesting self-presentation as a key to understanding the genre's dynamics. By framing the material as sapiential, the authors/editors provide a hermeneutical tool for readers, based on a set of shared conventions. Forming the scarlet thread of the genre, this »self-identification« is »thickened« by a set of fluid features – many of which are related to the labile conventions associated with the wise. This spinal cord links later works to the tradition even when expectations change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article theorises the 'speculative anthology' as a formal experiment in futurity that challenges how anthologies have been used to publish, and promote, science fiction from the Global South in the international literary marketplace. It focuses on the 'Futures Past' series of anthologies published by Comma Press – Iraq+100 (2016), Palestine+100 (2019), Kurdistan+100 (2021), and Egypt+100 (2024) – in which indigenous writers are asked to imagine regional futures one century after a major historical event that has defined the pasts and presents of these existing, or aspiring, nation states. Building on recent scholarship in postcolonial print culture which has proposed new strategies for reading evolving genres of the anthology, I first consider the speculative anthology as a heterogeneous literary form which has the capacity to facilitate creative collaboration and collective forms of critique. At the same time, I show how such anthologies reveal a homogenising impulse, often rooted in national imaginaries, and can encourage an anthropological approach to literary writing, especially by minoritised authors. Reading across the paratextual infrastructures of the 'Futures Past' series, I then compare how individual anthologies are shaped by various speculative editorial and publishing practices. I conclude that this experiment in futurity undertakes meaningful, yet imperfect, speculative work as it imagines how writing about the future by authors from the Global South might be anthologised otherwise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current paper aims to present linguistic, pragmatic, and sociocultural features of the paratexts of the Peresopnytsia Gospel and five complete Ukrainian translations of the Holy Scriptures. The ultimate goal of the study is to highlight the peritextual and epitextual dimensions of these translations and to classify translation paratexts, whose characteristics are determined by both the translator’s strategy and the mono-confessional or interconfessional requirements of translation commissioners. The article’s assumptions are grounded in the interdisciplinary approach at the interface of translation studies, biblical studies, religious studies, and historiography. The objective of developing a classification of paratexts in Bible translations within historical, theoretical, and critical contexts is accomplished via the methods of analysis, synthesis, induction, and modelling. The interpretive textual and cultural analysis methods are applied to identify and explain cultural, national, and religiously determined connotations of the paratexts. The comparative translation analysis provides a historically based translation quality assessment. As a result, paratexts of Ukrainian Bible translations have been classified according to thematic and pragmatic criteria. The paratextual dimensions of Bible translation are marked with 1) blurred agency (in many cases, it is difficult to determine the contribution of the translator or theological and literary editors), 2) restrictive requirements of the commissioner, 3) the impact of the overall translation strategy on the nature, type, and content of paratexts. However, no restrictions can conceal the implicit reader of each of these translations, to whom the paratexts appeal as a “second voice” of the main text. Paratexts of the first partial Ukrainian translations of the Holy Scriptures of the Confessionalism period (second half of the 16th century) are characterised by didacticism and a mono-confessional political orientation. The most important translation of that time, the Peresopnytsia Gospel, is analysed to specify the following types of verbal paratexts: 1) identification, containing data on the commissioner/publisher and the translators, as well as the date and place of its creation; 2) informative, providing all additional information not found in the prototext, including brief paraphrases of the main text, dates of the church calendar, and information on the structure of the book; they are often mono-confessional and polemical; 3) meta-lingual, explaining Church Slavonic vocabulary in glosses with Ukrainian equivalents or providing Ukrainian synonyms for Ukrainian words. The findings of the study prove that all complete translations of the Holy Scriptures into Ukrainian, both at the textual and paratextual levels, adhered to the principles of interconfessionality, accessibility for all Christians, and “functional loyalty”. The footnotes were the most important paratexts of the Ukrainian Bible translations made under the auspices of Bible Societies. Only in translations of the Bible of the 21st century does a preface appear, either a short one with general information about the translation strategy (Modern Translation, 2020) or a lengthy one with a detailed justification for the choice of the prototext’s language, a comparative table of the canons of the Old and New Testaments in different translations, and general information about the content of the Bible (New Translation, 2011). The footnotes in all Ukrainian translations done under the auspices of Bible Societies are divided into: explanations of biblical metaphor; explanations of the etymology of proper names; explanations of biblical traditions; alternative readings; foreign language equivalents; and meta-lingual explanations. The prevalence and peculiarities of footnotes depend upon the translation strategy. Thus, only among the footnotes in Ohiyenko’s translation can we trace such types as literal translations of complicated biblical metaphors and explanations of etymological wordplay. In addition, explanations of biblical metaphors are quantitatively prevalent in this translation. Such paratextual features are explained by the principle of foreignization, on which this translation is based. The Modern Translation by R. Turkoniak, in tandem with the Revising Committee of the Ukrainian Bible Society, aims to bring the Scriptures closer to the modern believer, not least through its footnotes. While Ohiyenko’s footnotes offer an alternative reading of some verses in “sacred” languages (Latin, Greek, and Church Slavonic), Turkoniak provides equivalents from translations into modern European languages and previous Ukrainian translations. The elements of “modernization” in the footnotes include vernacular vocabulary and associations with the realities and values of today. The interconfessional nature of Ukrainian translations of the Bible becomes visible in the church affiliations of the agents, such as the tandem of Orthodox Kulish and Greek Catholic Puluj, the cooperation of Ohiyenko, the Metropolitan of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church and Protestant pastors Kuziv and Zhabko-Potapovych, the New (2011) and Modern (2020) translations as part of the project of the Ukrainian Bible Society, which brought together representatives of all denominations of independent Ukraine.

This article examines both industry-created and viewer-created paratexts of Disney’s new Mulan (2020) to shed light on the localization of industry-created paratexts for Chinese audiences, the reception of the film, and the tensions between industry-created and viewer-created paratexts in China. It reveals that Disney has localized the poster, trailers and promos of Mulan for Chinese audiences by highlighting the film’s all-star cast and creating an illusion of its faithfulness to The Ballad of Mulan, and the extolled virtues of filial piety and patriotism cherished in Chinese culture. The viewer-created paratext, danmu, of Mulan challenges the industry-created paratexts and demonstrates unfavorable reception of the film in China. It criticizes the film for its inauthenticity to The Ballad of Mulan, cultural appropriation, promotion of American values to meet the needs of English-speaking audiences for exoticness and cultural otherness. By investigating danmu as a viewer-created paratext, the present study has enriched paratextual research and reception studies in translation, media and film studies in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the variation and reconstruction of Chinese translations of Jonathan Swift's "Gulliver's Travels" from 1872 to 1948. The translations underwent changes to make the story more familiar and understandable to Chinese readers, including renaming, converting measurements, and altering the concept of time. The translators also incorporated traditional Chinese literary devices and techniques to make the text more appealing to the local audience. The article highlights the significance of variation and reconstruction in cross-cultural mediation and the impact of cultural and socio-political factors on literary translation. [Extracted from the article]

In the film and television industry, many social movements as #MeToo, #BuryYourGay or #BlackLivesMatter have highlighted the necessity of better representations of marginalised communities on and off screen. As diversity and inclusion have become major issues in contemporary societies, video-on-demand (VOD) platforms have publicly committed to diversify representation in the films and series they produce and distribute. This article investigates how streaming platforms with different commercial or public interests and in different national contexts understand and promote diversity and inclusion through the analysis of paratext. Focussing on the visual analysis of thumbnails, we compare the French and Norwegian national public platforms (France TV and NRK TV) with the most popular commercial national platforms in each country (Canal + Series in France and Viaplay in Norway). The visibility and invisibility of gender, race, sexuality and (dis)ability on TV series' thumbnails reveal certain national and platforms' social, cultural and political values. By using mixed quantitative and qualitative methods including interviews conducted with industry professionals, we aim to highlight the impact of streaming platforms' promotional practices on the (in)visibility of diversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital influencers who spread information about pop divas approach the deglamorization of their lives by paratextualizing activities carried out by them in their daily routines. Accordingly, this current study advocates that this deglamorization process points towards the “topification” of divas’ bodies, since it highlights their urgency to distance themselves from the utopianism required to keep their bodies as glamorized bodies. Thus, its aim is to analyze how Brazilian digital influencers paratextualize pop divas deglamorization process by subjecting influencers’ discourse to Foucault’s Discourse Analysis. The herein analyzed research file comprised news reports published on gossip blogs about pop divas. Results have evidenced two discursive formations: the first one refers to the formation and promotion of pop divas’ image and the second one reveals the support given to them. This result has shown that influencers paratextualize the deglamorization of pop divas by humanizing them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the close examination of 32 manuscripts produced in Kairouan between the 9th and the 11th centuries, this article reassesses the content and function of their paratext and interrogates some diagnostic features of their scripts and page layout. In the first part, we demonstrate that some dated notes can refer to auditions and readings that occurred decades before the production of the manuscripts on which they appear, and therefore cannot be used as termini ante quem for dating them. In the second part, we discuss some key palaeographic parameters for a better understanding of Ifrīqī scripts, their origin, and their development, with a view to establishing a set of reliable criteria for a more accurate dating and contextualisation of this little-known material. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I argue that Sébastien Brémond (1646?–1705?) used his dedicatory paratexts to create a homosocial bond between the author and libertine members of the French faction at Charles II’s court. Coupled with Brémond’s use of the secret history genre and his North African settings that catered to the “Ottomanphilia” of the court during the 1670s, these paratexts situated Brémond as a court insider close to the king, ascribing him with some of the celebrity inherent in that court, and appealing to a wider audience eager to read about the antics of the libertine circle and the king. Looking at these paratexts as a group shows the translatability of the secret history genre across readerships, across political factions, and through time, while the case of Brémond reveals the ways that changing readerships impacted an author’s control over the meanings of their texts and their own authorial persona. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the numerous German translations of the traditional Chinese cultural classic Zhuangzi, the version by the missionary Richard Wilhelm, Dschuang Dsi. Das wahre Buch vom südlichen Blütenland (1912), is of great significance as the first direct translation from Chinese. The work contributed greatly to the popularity of Taoism in Germany. However, studies on the German versions of the Zhuangzi are limited, and most focus on the text itself, whereas the research value of the paratexts has been neglected. This study explores the role of paratexts of Wilhelm's translation in the construction of Zhuang Zhou's philosophical ideas. We find there is a noticeable presence of the translator's voice in the paratexts of Wilhelm's translation. Moreover, the interpretative role of the paratexts can enhance readers' understanding of Wilhelm's construction of the philosophical ideas conveyed by the text. Based on the analysis of paratexts, we conclude that Wilhelm's translation is characterized by Western cultural interventions, such as analogies between Zhuang Zhou and Western philosophers and the adoption of Christian claims. This may be attributed to the goal of Wilhelm's translation (i.e., to introduce the Zhuangzi to general German-speaking readers), his cultural background of Western education (especially at the Tübingen Seminary), and the sinological tradition of studying and translating Chinese classics from the perspective of Western culture at the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 16th century at the latest there were strong political, cultural and literary ties between the Iberian Peninsula and the Dutch speaking regions in north western Europe. Literature in general and especially romances from the 'south' were printed, translated and adapted in Dutch. After an introduction in which the contribution presents a short overview of the translation and adaptation of Iberian romances in Dutch the focus will be on the 'Amadijs' tradition especially. For the first time the Spanish source and the 'Amadijs' are compared, including an analysis of the paratextual elements of the first Dutch edition of 'Amadijs' (1546), which clearly shows that Nuyts did not follow his source as an inspiration for the design of his edition, but copied the design of earlier Dutch editions of narratives as a marketing strategy. Part four shows that the Dutch 'Amadijs' was obviously read by everyone in the early modern period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vesna Parun is an author with a strong awareness of the importance of paratext, which includes, among others, the title, cover, author's name, epigraphs, annotations, dedications, reviews, interviews, prefaces, afterwords, different types of notes... This paper is an introduction to studying the role of paratext in her poetry book Bubnjevi umjesto srca (DHK, Zagreb 2003). In this work, the research focused on the titles of poems and chapters in the collection, notes, comments and epigraphs. It is proven that Vesna Parun is an author who systematically uses the pragmatic functions of the paratext, which forms an inseparable whole with the body of the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increasing proliferation of the internet, audience-authored online paratexts continue to gain significance in culture and in the communicative structures of narrative texts. This article takes a critical look at the ways in which Gérard Genette's concept of paratext (1987) has been used in contemporary scholarship. The article offers a model of online paratexts based on an interdisciplinary understanding of paratextuality and internet-age culture. Ways in which paratexts become legitimate in online environments are considered through the analysis of HBO's popular TV series Game of Thrones (2011–2019). Legitimation extends from production-authored paratexts to audience-authored paratexts, reflecting changes in the relationship between authors and readers typical to contemporary culture. Finally, the article introduces the concept of paratextual reauthoring, which refers to the practice of canonizing alternative interpretations of texts via the use of online paratexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the connection between the online commentary on the South Korean novel, and later film, Kim Ji-Young, Born 1982 (2016; film released in 2019), and the perception of feminism within South Korea. To capture how Kim Ji-Young’s “meaning” is entangled with popular beliefs about feminism, I analyze audience reception through Kim Ji-Young’s paratexts: (a) tweets and (b) comments responding to newspaper articles mentioning the novel and/or film Kim Ji-Young from the Korean platform Naver. I examine paratexts to reveal that the “meaning” Kim Ji-Young has in online spaces is not determined solely by the novel or film-as-referent. I show that Kim Ji-Young the source text has become inextricable from the mélange of preconceptions regarding what constitutes a “feminist” stance in Korea, ranging from the stereotype of the selfish “feminist” who shirks her maternal duty towards the nation to the discontent of stay-at-home moms. I show that online misogyny has forced those who support Kim Ji-Young’s feminist message to employ what rhetorician Leah Ceccarelli describes as “strategic ambiguity.” This involves simultaneously disavowing Kim Ji-Young‘s feminism while praising the text’s feminist politics, a tactic used to shield themselves from attacks by misogynistic trolls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article "Learning Through Practice: On How Kemyt Contributed to Crafting and Transmitting Scribal Knowledge" by Aurore Motte examines the practices of ancient Egyptian scribes and how they transmitted their knowledge. It analyzes the structure of the Kemyt text and the choice of ink and writing direction used. It is determined that there was a complex network of scribes who contributed to the development and transmission of written knowledge. The Kemyt text has been found in various materials and regions of Egypt and describes different features of the Kemyt specimens found in Deir el-Medina. Various types of corrections and revisions in Egyptian literary texts are also described. The texts demonstrate the changes in literary culture during the New Kingdom. Various aspects of Egyptian script and language are also addressed. [Extracted from the article]

This paper intends to present the way in which the biography of the Moldavian prince Dimitrie Cantemir entered the Romanian culture at the beginning of the 19th century. Written in English, as an abridged version of a French prototext, the biographical text about Dimitrie Cantemir reached the Romanian culture through a German intermediary, the preface to the second German edition of Descriptio Moldaviae. Almost simultaneously it appeared in Romanian translation in two versions: as foreword to Scrisoarea Moldovei (1825) and as independent text, in the periodical Bibliotecă românească (1829). The purpose of this paper is to identify the circulation of the biographical text from French to English, German, and Romanian, with a focus on the textual changes along this route. Furthermore, this paper also concentrates on the versions of the biography, initially designed as afterword, then as foreword, and which also circulated as independent text in Romanian. The analysis of these versions focuses on the intentionality of each translation: a paratextual element with an informative scope, and an autonomous text, published in a periodical, whose purpose was the education of the Romanian readership, and the creation of a national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses two recent essays published by the memoirists Amani Haydar (The Mother Wound) and Lucia Crowley-Osborne (I Choose Elena; My Body Keeps Your Secrets) during 2020–2022. By conceptualising these essays as paratext, drawing on Gillian Whitlock's consideration of the paratext as a critical apparatus in an ethics of reading memoir, this article argues that Haydar and Crowley-Osborne are amplifying a broader call for care from Australian authors who write about trauma, illness and disability in autobiographical genres. Negotiating with some of the formal, cultural and generic limits for memoir as social justice, these essays emphasise the cultural value of narrating life stories as well as potential personal and community benefits. In their essays, Haydar and Crowley-Osborne offer exegetical insights on process and craft, but they also draw attention to trauma memoirs' afterlives: to the evolving impact of circulation, reception and promotion on autobiographical life writing and in the context of what Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson name the unstable "futurity" of this genre. In doing so, these writers make visible ongoing wellbeing and other challenges for the author of trauma memoir after the work is published. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is close reading and what are the steps we take in close reading as a methodological approach? This article explores reading strategies and advocates for a more conscious close reading. Starting by tracing the hermeneutic heritage of close reading, and examining its development from the New Criticism movement onwards, it then describes the fundamental physical and cognitive aspects of reading as a distinct form of analytic attentiveness. Three methodological steps are delineated, discussed, and exemplified through the author's close reading practices. By employing a paratextual lens to the close reading of manuscripts from the Early Modern period, the article demonstrates how theoretically informed readings, such as the paratextual perspective, enhance the reading process and deepen our understanding of historical conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An academic volume is a literary text, and the knowledge within is a subject to its interpretation. In the spirit of work by last century's great literary scholars Auerbach (Time History and Literature. Princeton University Press, 253–265, 2014) and De Man (The Resistance to Theory. University of Minnesota Press. 21-26, 1987) I have applied a film theory conceptualization of paratext defined by Gray (Show Sold Separately. New York University Press, 2010) to reading of an educational classic The Process of Education by Bruner (The Process of Education. Harvard University Press, 1977). By contrasting the reviews of this famous text published within the last two decades with the volume and its later explanations by the book's author, I have critically confronted the interpretation of this text. Themes discussed include the historical context and the influence of The Process of Education for the development of education in the United States and elsewhere in the world until today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigatess the role of producer-end and fan-made paratexts in digital platforms in realizing the educational effects of television entertainment among fans. Focusing specifically on the case of Super Vocal, a highbrow music-themed television show with explicit educational purposes, the study examines the informal learning outcomes experienced by fans who engage with officially produced and fan-created texts associated with the show. Through an online survey administered to a sample of 754 Super Vocal fans, the study reveals that the direct association between fans' acquisition of music-related knowledge and consumption is primarily observed for the source text itself. However, the educational effects of producer-end and fan-made paratexts manifest more prominently in their capacity to motivate fans to attend music performances. Furthermore, fans' consumption of paratexts indirectly facilitates knowledge acquisition by stimulating active information-seeking behaviors. This study contributes to the understanding of entertainment education (EE) television programs by emphasizing the perspective of creative fan participation. Paratexts related to EE television shows collaborate with officially produced content to achieve educational objectives, with fans' informal learning behaviors playing a significant role in this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The publication of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea makes it possible to teach not only a much wider assorted of her edited poetry, but also Finch’s two dramas: the tragicomedy The Triumphs of Love and Innocence, and the tragedy Aristomenes. This essay proposes integrating Finch’s plays into a course on Restoration and eighteenth-century drama by proposing a class, “Genre Trouble,” which sets them in dialogue with frequently-taught plays of the era. Included herein are a syllabus of primary and secondary sources, suggestions for discussing Finch’s plays and dramatic paratexts in comparison to works by Behn, Centlivre, Dryden, Otway, Rowe, and Wycherley, and a lesson plan that enables students to investigate differences between “closet” and professionally staged drama and understand how a playwright’s gender figures into this divide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of RumeliDE Journal of Language & Literature Research / RumeliDE Dil ve Edebiyat Araştırmaları Dergisi is the property of RumeliDE Uluslararasi Hakemli Dil & Edebiyat Arastirmalari Dergisi and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article asks whether and what differences exist between the notions of pseudotranslation and partial cultural translation. Although they are both ultimately untranslated texts, their respective definitions acknowledge the possibility that each category may be taken as a translation. To answer its research question, the article examines the distinctive features of pseudotranslation and partial cultural translation across three primary sources that showcase traits common to both categories. First, the analysis sets these two notions against the backdrop of a fictional subtext which informs translation theory, demonstrating how pseudotranslation and partial cultural translation feed into this subtext. It then goes on to investigate the function of paratexts and culture-specific items in the three primary sources. Finally, the article identifies the different intentions underpinning pseudotranslation and partial cultural translation: while the former explicitly aims to be perceived as a translation, the latter is not written to be consumed as a translated text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

'The Laughing Girl' ('Yingning') is a short fictional story from Liaozhai zhiyi, a collection of uncanny and surreal stories written by the Chinese writer Pu Songling between the 1660s and 1720s. The stories have been made available for anglophone readers as Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio published in 2006, canonised by Penguin Classics and the translator John Minford, whose approach rooted in 'nouvelle Chinoiserie' imbues the tales with a sense of novelty or strangeness, both textually and paratextually. In this study, we will investigate how Minford foregrounds the story's novelty with his translator's voice in the translated text. Comparison and analysis reveal that on the textual level, Minford's shifting focalisation and narrative voice accentuates the strangeness in 'The Laughing Girl' and that his additions in terms of characterisation construct Yingning an even more outlandish fox spirit. On the paratextual level, he foregrounds the text's novelty at the expense of other themes, such as the moral edification or social critique. Minford's unique perspective on and approach to the source text align with the publisher's aim to appeal to a general readership, leading him to highlight the text's exoticism in his translation. Although Minford's translation is both accessible and stylistically deft, it appears to reduce Strange Tales to a mere anthology of the bizarre and grotesque while constructing an 'imagined and ethereal orient', as is clearly indicated by the corpus-assisted readers' reception analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the overlaps between a fictional paratext and a fictional personal narrative, as framed within Jordy Rosenberg’s 2018 novel Confessions of the Fox. The novel’s primary narrative, a “manuscript” of the metafictional biography of eighteenth-century transgender criminal célèbre Jack Sheppard, is encased in multiple layers of heavy footnoting by the novel’s narrator, Dr. Voth, a trans scholar himself. Rosenberg manipulates the novel form with insertions of substantial paratextual narrative, crossing over and at times mirroring Sheppard’s story, blending queer theorizations of temporality with narrative structural innovations to explore a trans “touch across time.” Rosenberg thus queers the nature and function of the paratext, reimagining and complicating its centrality to both the narrative “presenting” and the temporal “making present” of an individual narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines "The Message," a 2015 audio drama science fiction podcast with a verisimilar narrative that led some listeners to interpret it as nonfiction. It argues the podcast's use of nonfiction genre conventions, web paratexts, and its reception context contributed to such misinterpretations. It situates "The Message" in context with "The War of the Worlds" and a contemporaneous audio text that similarly duped listeners, and explores listener discourses about the podcast on Reddit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Magic: The Gathering trading card is an underexplored bookish medium for literary theory and print culture that promotes the interrogation of existing conventions of authorship, paratext, and ephemerality. By focusing on the Magic card through a literary lens rather than one of game studies, the cards reveal as much about themselves as they reveal about literary theory. As a user centric medium, Magic cards connect to the larger history of commonplace books and support Barthes' claim of author death. Conversely, the diverse discursive contexts in which Magic cards are used demonstrate the usefulness of Foucault's "author function". Additionally, the compact size of the Magic card creates tension that strains paratextual understandings of unity. By looking at the Magic card as a bookish form, current theoretical understandings are further developed, and real word applications, creating anti-racist spaces and promoting nonlinear and communal storytelling, become demystified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paratext is designed to mediate between texts and readers, but few studies have analysed the paratextual evolution of the same translation and its function in relation to a work's reception. This article examines how spatial changes to paratexts in eleven editions of Rongrong Ren's Chinese version of Charlotte's Web have a bearing on the translation's reception. A qualitative analysis of reader comments on social media shows that: (1) an allographic preface adapted from a book review arouses some readers' interest but acts as a spoiler for others; and (2) changing the translator's preface to a postscript reduces the risk of giving the plot away in advance. In addition to demonstrating the role of paratext in relation to translation reception, the article further argues that, on a methodological level, researchers should note the paratextual differences between editions when conducting reception studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Escales (1923) is a book of short stories by César Vallejo that has scarcely been studied by specialized critics. The present hermeneutic research is focused on explaining how allegory is configured through paratextual elements such as the title, the subheadings and the epigraph. I focus on these components because, through studying previous critical examinations, I have noticed that these elements are the least analysed, in contrast to the attention that has been paid to the characters and the strictly narrative components. The interest aroused by the analysis and interpretation of these elements is based on the fact that they are figures that encode, in their allegorical materiality, Vallejo's proposal for the search for a language that may channel the shock of the experience of imprisonment – a language that is also put forward as a form of resistance to injustice. The theoretical explanation of the components and functions of the paratext is guided by Gérard Genette, and, for the formal and conceptual precisions of allegory, I follow the reflections of Walter Benjamin, Jürgen Habermas, Tzvetan Todorov, Paul de Man and Craig Owens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the different lives of the short moral treatise Le chemin de l'ospital , which was written by the French nobleman and military officer Robert de Balsac in the late fifteenth century. The moral treatise lists various types of people whose bad behavior has earned them a place in the hospital or poorhouse. In the late 1480s, Le chemin de l'ospital was included in the richly illuminated manuscript MS Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, 167. The text was probably printed for the first time in Toulouse between 1494 and 1501. Several other editions were printed in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This article examines the relationship between the Le chemin de l'ospital and its various material manifestations over time. It argues that material context and paratext influenced the intended reception of the text and it emphasizes how materiality and paratext could shift the intended reading from purely moral to playful and parodic based. The study thus highlights the transformative power of materiality and paratext the late medieval and early modern period, particularly in relation to parody, and underlines the role of printers in shaping intended reception. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Every play collection represents an interpretative act that evaluates the materials it contains. In this quatercentenary year since the publication of Shakespeare's First Folio, this article positions the volume alongside other play collections from the period to show how they construct, through their strategies of selection and presentation, influential narratives that affect how we engage with the texts they contain. It identifies four practices that clarify a collection's strategies – categorising, fixing, authorising, and fetishizing – and takes each of these in turn, casting a spotlight on the First Folio's interest in 'Histories', its professed fixity, its valuation of Shakespeare as sole author, and its imperative to fetishize the book. Other collections, including Alexander's Monarchic Tragedies (1604, 1607), Daniel's Whole Works (1623), and Lyly's Six Court Comedies (1632), advertise different strategies: some prioritise cross-genre readings; some construct networks of authorisers (including stationers and dedicatees) who inform reading practices; and some embrace a lack of fixity, denying final authority to the material book. This article demonstrates that Shakespeare's Folio cannot be taken as a touchstone for plays in collection. The volume has, nevertheless, had an outsized influence on how we understand Shakespeare and his plays, and the work of other early modern writers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on the Foucauldian framework, this research aims to analyze how fans’ prosumption of media products’ paratext reveals consumers’ governmentality. The Netnographic Foucauldian Genealogy was adopted to analyze the fans’ interaction with media paratexts of the movie Avengers: Endgame. Results show that fans’ opinions ranged from acknowledging the quality of paratexts to feeling disappointed with them. Thus, it is possible to state that fans allow themselves to be governed by the entertainment industry to safeguard their fan condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing upon the notion of 'paratextual agency' (Paloposki, "Limits of Freedom" 191), the current study investigated the agency of the Iranian fansubbers. To do so, a corpus of 20 Persian fansubs of Hollywood movies released during the last decade was selected randomly. The study was carried out in two steps. Firstly, translators' notes were categorized based on their content, frequency, and percentage of each category. Secondly, these notes were analyzed to scrutinize the agency of the Iranian fansubbers. The findings of the study reveal that notes added on the part of the Iranian fansubbers can be categorized into narrative-related notes, locations, famous figures, organizations, medical information, allusions, and transliteration. The study illustrates that by providing such notes to the audience, Iranian fansubbers move beyond the conventional role of subtitler and a mere linguistic conveyor of the movies and take the responsibility of teachers, researchers, cultural representatives, and intermediary agents. The study concludes that fansubbing in Iran is concerned with elucidating culture-bound items of the movies to make them more understandable for the audience. The conclusions of this study can open up prospective avenues for the sociologically-oriented approaches to audiovisual translation, with an eye on the agency and status of fansubbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Paratexts in Translation is dedicated to translation aspects relating to the concept of the paratext, which has been in vogue in translation studies over the last two decades. The term paratext was applied by the late French literary theorist Gérard Genette (1930‒2018) to refer to “those liminal devices and conventions, both within and outside the book, that form part of the complex mediation between book, author, publisher and reader: titles, forewords, epigraphs and publishers’ jacket copy are part of a book’s private and public history”. Since then, the definition of the paratext has been both expanded to include reviews and literary criticism as well as refined into the subdivisions of peritexts (i.e., material in same volume as the text, such as prefaces and footnotes), epitexts (i.e., elements outside the book, such as interviews with the author), metatexts (i.e., critical commentary), and extratexts (i.e., texts that can influence how a translation is produced or received).

Genette's Seuils considers the dramatic paratext as the odd one out, and, indeed, the early‐modern theatrical paratext has remained understudied. This article discusses the paratexts of the comedies of Giovanni Battista Calderari, a sixteenth‐century author quite neglected by scholars, whose works were published in Vicenza and Venice. By focusing on the paratexts of La Mora (The Moorish Woman, 1588), La schiava (The Slave Woman, 1589), and Armida (1600), the article stresses Calderari's attempts to clarify his poetic ideas and his endeavours to create a network of intellectuals and obtain their opinions about his work. These interlocutors belonged to the knights of Malta and the Vicenzan Accademia Olimpica, two circles to which Calderari himself belonged, but they also were authoritative Venetian intellectuals. His insertion of poems and letters that praise his person and work, reveals his attempt to promote himself and his writings. He tries to promote himself not only as a military man or a great Vicenzan poet, but as a scholar of theatre who is able to juggle poetic discourse and is worthy to be considered by intellectuals, though he ultimately seems to have failed to really assert himself on the Venetian cultural scene and the Vicenzan stage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]