Shakespeare Refracted in Manga: an Homage to André Lefevere

Abstract

Most of the canonical texts we engage with are not in their original form. Rather, as André Lefevere suggested in the early 1980s, they have been somehow rewritten, be it through translation, adaptation, remediation, or summary. This has become much more relevant and apparent in the digital age than at any other time in the past. The interesting case in point examined here is the first attempt to translate works by Shakespeare into a manga format outside Japan, namely, Manga Shakespeare Hamlet (2007), SelfMadeHero’s first volume in its Manga Shakespeare series. To supplement Lefevere’s thought, a Bourdieusian sociological approach is applied, particularly in relation with the transfer of prestige between Shakespeare as a canonical author and manga as a genre. The target text is posited in the framework of the social context of its production and reception and the various textual, ideological, and generic shifts that have taken place at the target end are discussed in relation to the socio-economic milieu, medium affordances, restrictions, and choices by the rewriters who mediated Shakespeare’s Hamlet.