Shakespeare as German Author: Reception, Translation Theory, and Cultural Transfer ed. by John A. McCarthy (review)

As John McCarthy notes in his introduction to this volume, "there has been no dearth of writing on Shakespeare reception in Germany" (1). Indeed, the idea that Shakespeare could be called unser Shakespeare—in other words, the idea that he could be co-opted as a German national poet—has proven to be a remarkably resilient one, as recent studies by Emily Oliver (on Shakespeare and German Reunification) and Andreas Höfele (on Shakespeare and right-wing movements in Germany) have demonstrated.

Acknowledging this wealth of material, McCarthy and his contributors nevertheless argue that we should turn our attention back to a formative moment of the unser Shakespeare phenomenon. Specifically, this means "Shakespeare reception in German around 1800" (vii), and the significance of translation and—more widely—reception and edition history for what McCarthy convincingly demonstrates to have been a "critical naturalization phase of his [Shakespeare's] evolution as a German poet in an electrifyingly new idiom" (67). Two key questions thus drive the chapters gathered by McCarthy in the volume: first, how "early translators of the Bard draw on established theories of translation" (vii), and secondly, whether "one can explain the rapid rise of William Shakespeare to the status of canonical German writer against the backdrop of cultural transfer theory" (vii).

Over a third of the volume is dedicated to McCarthy's English-language introduction. This is not a gloss of the chapters to come, but a substantial independent survey which forms a useful resource for anyone seeking a clear and succinct account of the early reception of Shakespeare in Germany. Whilst this story is relatively well known, it is useful to be reminded of the significance of figures such as J.J. Eschenburg, while McCarthy's emphasis on continuity demands we reevaluate the impact of pioneering figures such as Martin Wieland. McCarthy first outlines the early translations, editions, and essays on Shakespeare, clearly demonstrating how "the publishing history of Shakespeare translations into German […] has to be taken into account along with the canonical status of specific editions in order to understand the 'naturalization' of Shakespeare" (5). McCarthy then outlines the impact of figures such as Wieland, Lessing, Weisse, Herder, Eschenburg, Schlegel, Tieck, Goethe, Gervinus, Dilthey, and Gundolf—a panoramic account that actually moves significantly beyond the specific focus on the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, through to the later 19^th and early 20^th centuries, too. The introduction then closes with a methodological discussion of approaches to translation and cultural transfer, including a highly fruitful analysis of how early Shakespeare translation functioned in the context of theories of translation from that time (and thus not only through the prism of contemporary translation theory). Defining cultural transfer, McCarthy argues that it should be seen as a "non-oppositional form of transculturation" (73), one that, in other words, "has nothing to do with cultural dominance, appropriation, or imperialism" (71), but rather considers "contact zones" or "coherence clusters" (72). Though this perhaps downplays a little the politics of cultural appropriation, it clearly reveals the guiding principle of the volume, which focusses on patterns of cultural transfer as embodied in the "communicative communit[ies]" (73) created by the "interaction between a translator, the original text, other translations and translators, critics, dramaturgs, and audiences" (73).

Case studies of these "communicative communit[ies]" (73) are then provided in the following seven chapters. Six of these chapters are in German; one in English. It is perhaps a slight shame that, after producing such a helpful English-language introduction (thus avoiding "limiting the audience to just German speakers," viii), many of these detailed analyses will not be open to scholars in anglophone Shakespeare Studies. This is especially the case since, beyond the famous work of Schlegel– Tieck, many of the figures discussed in this volume are not particularly well known in that context (though readers seeking an English-language account of this...