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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]

It has long been recognized that paratexts – those liminal features that accompany the main text in a book – perform a primary role in interpretation since they mediate the text to the readers. They function like a commentary, trying to influence and guide readers to a better comprehension of the text. At the same time, they are artifacts of reception because in the pre-modern period, paratexts are the product of scribes and reading communities. Thus, by studying paratexts, one can have access to how the text was received and how readers shape the reading practices of subsequent users. The study of paratexts in the field of biblical studies has been a booming area of research, while the study of these features in the so-called apocryphal literature is only in its dawn. This article intends to help to remedy the situation by studying the titles of the 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John. Since this text exerted a huge amount of influence in shaping the eschatological imagination of many Christians in Late Antiquity and given the scarce amount of information that we have on its reception, studying the paratexts of the manuscripts – titles, specifically – is the safest bet to recover its reception/interpretation and the reading practices of its readers. Based on the study of 1 Apocr. Apoc. John’s titles, this article concludes that (1) 1 Apocr. Apoc. John was read as an apocalypse; that is, readers thought that the text mediated hitherto unknown divine knowledge; (2) readers of 1 Apocr. Apoc. John believed that it was an authentic work of John the apostle and thus authoritative and true; (3) readers were guided to navigate 1 Apocr. Apoc. John as dealing primarily with classical eschatological topoi: the antichrist, the second coming, and the end of the world.

In his collection of Buddhist miracle tales, the Records of Miraculous Recompense (Mingbao ji 冥報記), Tang Lin 唐臨 provided epilogues for most of his entries, documenting the sources and/or transmissions of stories that he had gathered over time. Situating these seemingly disparate, fragmentary paratexts in the context of the medieval "culture of informal storytelling," this essay analyzes the range and composition of social networks as Tang Lin represents them in his epilogues. I then examine how his social networks, or his networks of informal storytelling, in the collection were embedded in the broader social world of the time. The case provides us with valuable glimpses into the dynamics of the culture of informal storytelling, especially its oral mode, and how it intersected with contemporaneous commemorative culture and lay Buddhist culture. These connections enable us to better understand the crucial roles that the culture of informal storytelling played in the medieval period before the advent of printing and other mass media. [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]

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]

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]

This article attempts to answer the following question: why did the author of the apocryphon called 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John choose to efface himself and adopt John as his pseudonym? Why not Peter or Paul? This paper argues that the author of 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John intended to harness the audience attached to John, the seer of Revelation, by taking his name as a pseudonym. This paper sustains this claim by demonstrating that, in antiquity, each author had a specific pool of readers, often made out of friends and accolades of the author. Thus, authors' names evoke an audience attached to them. When an author takes another person's name to write under, he does so out of necessity, because he does not have an audience. But, when he takes another's person name, he does so hoping to trick the audience of the impersonated into reading him. Based on this insight, this article concludes that the author of 1 Apocr. Apoc. John wanted the readers of canonical Revelation to engage with his work and that he achieved his purpose as evinced by the fact that the titles of both works share an uncanny resemblance, ranging from identical titles to similar wording. Since titles in antiquity were given to the works by their readers, the most logical explanation for canonical Revelation and 1 Apocr. Apoc. John having the same titles is that they both shared the same readers. Finally, this article argues that, in line with recent research on the use of pseudepigraphy in Jewish, Christian, and Roman contexts, the author of 1 Apocr. Apoc. John wanted to be read by CR's readers because he wanted to expand, criticize, rework, and update CR's eschatological discourse, exemplified by a close reading of how 1 Apocr. Apoc. John criticized, reworked, and updated CR's presentation of the resurrection to bring it in harmony with late Christian reflection on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rarely are cookbooks simply collections of recipes; frequently, they offer a wealth of additional cultural and historical information. They serve as a medium for sharing ideas and memories; and thus operate rhetorically. Similarly, a recipe is not simply a set of instructions; it is a text embedded within and reflecting cultural, social, and historical contexts. Recipes act as rhetorical tools that foster communal continuity and cohesion. Cookbooks create a rhetorical space, engaging readers through both the main text and supplementary elements, or “paratexts,” as termed by Gérard Genette. This study examines the rhetorical function of Emily Meggett’s bestselling cookbook, Gullah Geechee Home Cooking, with a focus on her “Fried Okra” recipe and its accompanying paratexts. Analyzing these elements enhances our understanding of and appreciation for the cultural and rhetorical dimensions embedded within her cookbook.

Late 19th-century Singapore is considered the centre for the printing and distribution of Muslim-Malay lithographed texts in the Malay archipelago. In 1890, the island's print output was approximately six million pages, with many of these printed from lithography. Thus informed, our recent readings of Singapore's role in regional histories of the printed book tend to locate its prominence along contemporary, national lines – this is anachronistic. The island, historically, was neither nation nor state, but a British colonial settlement. Singapore's advantageous geographical position certainly established it as a prominent site for book production and distribution. However, the existing corpus of lithographed publications, printed at multiple localities, indicate a broader range of regional locations involved in Muslim printing. These texts, from mushaf to syair, often feature printed defects and paratextual marks on their pages. Informed by approaches from analytical bibliography and printing history, the materiality of these marks and defects can be 'read' to identify specific print production techniques. These, in turn, suggest printing methods that were common in British and Dutch territories, and beyond – an indication of the mobility of techniques, materials, and practitioners within the lithographic trade, and the collaborative nature of print enterprises in the Malay world. By discussing these printed marks, this article will (a) re-situate and revise our understanding of interactions and practices within the Muslim-Malay lithographic printing trade; and (b) posit the notion that late 19th-century Singapore is not the locus, but one of several sites of significance within a regional 'constellation' of printing activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Predicated upon a corpus of 4,200 films, this article documents, analyses, and interprets the international film industry's rhetorical disavowal of the comic book medium as a source for adaptation within advertising and promotional rhetoric for the cinematic adaptation of comic book texts. By analysing the statistical trends and patterns for comic book adaptations between 2000 and 2020, examining the language used within promotional trailers to conceptualise or promote the feature adaptation in relation to their comic book source material, and by comparing the type and scope of this rhetoric with other adapted texts of the same period, this article evidences and interrogates the overwhelming disavowal of the comic book medium despite the persistent and widely perceived ubiquity of comic book adaptation franchises. Above all, this article utilises statistical evidence and analysis to evidence clear patterns and trends within the perceived hierarchies of cultural taste or artistic value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The partition of India in 1947 that transgressed both the geographical and cultural boundaries left millions of people homeless and victims of communal violence. Like other media that presented the horror of partition, little magazines, too, responded to the post-partition socio-cultural upheaval. Despite being the "Other" to mainstream printing practices, little magazines became socially pungent and attentive critique of the socio-political milieu of the state. Bangla little magazines promoted a body of partition literature which was often side-lined by the mainstream magazines and academia. This article explores the trajectories of politics and culture in which these small presses conceptualized "partition" both as a historical event and literary representation that revived the cultural amnesia to reproduce an alternative storehouse of counter narratives. Moreover, focusing on the paratexts, it decodes the esthetic paradigms of these "advance guard" magazines to understand their representational politics. In short, this article relocates "partition" within the network of Bangla little magazines and its alternative printing cultures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sixteenth and seventeenth-century writers were preoccupied with reflecting on the nature of the mind. A vast array of authors seized upon the opportunities offered by new and established literary genres to explore the place that the mind held as a governing force of the human individual, but little attention has been paid to the portrayal of minds suffering from creative frustrations of a non-romantic nature. My article establishes the importance of this literary topos in respect to Isabella Whitney's A Sweet Nosgay (1573), Nicholas Breton's A Smale Handfull of Fragrant Flowers (1575), and George Gascoigne's The Posies of George Gascoigne (1575). I explore the prefatory materials of each collection to reveal their shared concern with the ways that the mind can be corrupted, and perhaps cured, by the labor of poetry creation. More specifically, I trace the notion of the bruised brain as it appears in the prefatory poems of Whitney's Nosgay to Gascoigne's Posies to establish new points of connection and potential influence between these authors, in addition to shedding new light on an underappreciated aspect of Elizabethan poetic culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Spelled in several different ways, the word 'doubt', usually in the plural 'doubts' (dubbi, dubitazioni) appears on the frontispiece of several works printed in Venice and elsewhere in Italy in the sixteenth century. Building on different traditions, ranging from the pseudo‐Aristotelian Problemata to Medieval didactic literature, these texts, normally in the vernacular, address questions that the average reader may have on a variety of topics: from thermal baths to indulgences, from natural philosophy to duel. While usually the term 'doubt' means 'question', things can be sometimes less straightforward, especially when it comes to religious texts or works penned by unorthodox writers, as in the case of Ortensio Lando's Quattro libri di dubbi. This article will explore paratextual elements of works addressing doubts focusing on a variety of topics such as readership, definitions of doubt and its function, the role of these works in the dissemination of knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay addresses the Secreti diversi et miracolosi, one of the many 'books of secrets' (collections of medical and craft recipes) which crowded the sixteenth‐century Venetian book market. First published in 1563 and spuriously ascribed to the physician Gabriele Falloppia, this book was already subject to significant structural changes in its second edition (1565). The editors of the first and second editions, Giovanni Antonio Di Maria and Borgaruccio Borgarucci, discussed their respective choices concerning the arrangement of the collection in their prefatory letters. This essay examines the prefatory and organizational paratexts of both editions, which reveal a tension between the readability of the book and the reliability of its contents. It argues that the different paratextual strategies pursued by Di Maria and Borgarucci had a profound impact on the contours of 'Falloppia"s literary identity, the functions envisioned for the collection, and the epistemological value of the recipes therein. The editorial history of the Secreti diversi also prompts broader considerations on the popularity of books of secrets, showing how this was not only a matter of content but also, and often more importantly, how that content was presented to the readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introductory article presents the framework and contributions of the special issue Paratexts, Dissemination, and Book Market in Early Modern Venice (1500‐1650). This volume aims to shed a new light on the publishing activity of poligrafi and other figures operating in Venice and its area of cultural influence. In this context, the use of paratexts simultaneously serves to disseminate knowledge, portray self‐fashioning strategies, and respond attentively to the market's and readers' needs. This collection of essays highlights how paratexts can provide valuable insights for analyses grounded in different disciplines and methodologies. Indeed, the present issue brings together studies that examine paratexts from a literary, historical‐cultural, and linguistic perspective. The authors explore aspects of early modern culture that are relevant but still neglected in modern scholarship and thereby advance our understanding of writing and publishing as a complex modality of cultural exchange from the Cinquecento to the beginning of the Seicento. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article aims to explore the construction of a common enunciative identity in a set of paratexts belonging to a corpus of works that contain texts translated by María Elena Walsh and Elsa Bornemann, namely La nube traicionera (published by Sudamericana in 1989) and Antología del cuento infantil (published by Editorial Latina in 1977). From a methodological framework that considers situations of enunciation and communication, as proposed by Maingueneau, I will attempt to demonstrate that the discursive manifestations found in this corpus reinforce author-translators' positioning as part of a groundbreaking literary-discursive tradition in Argentina. This literary and discursive disposition is characterised, among other things, by political commitment and a poetics that proposes novel, unprejudiced ways of looking at the world, far removed from indoctrination in all its shapes and forms. To complement this exploration, I will also venture towards a characterisation of the communicative identity of the enunciator, which ultimately constitutes the translator's ethos (Spoturno), as a relevant aspect for theorisations of Translation Studies in the field of children's and young adult literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article delves into the analysis of two versions of Ksawery Pruszyński's work dedicated to the Spanish Civil War: the original Polish edition published in 1937 and its Spanish translation by Katarzyna Olszewska Sonnenberg and Sergio Trigán, released seventy years later in 2007. Considering translation as a phenomenon of cultural rewriting (Lefevere, 1992), we will observe how both versions of the book generated creative actions. In the original Polish text, these actions focused on a series of historical, political, and cultural correspondences between Spain and Poland, manifested through abundant intertexts. In the Spanish translation, the action related to the edition of explanatory-interpretative paratexts. Both rewritings underscore the substantial mediating function of the translating activity, along with its cultural implications.

Or le-'et 'erev was the most popular missionary pamphlet printed by the Pietist Institutum Judaicum et Muhammedicum in Halle (Saale). This Yiddish booklet garnered much attention among Jews and Christians alike, and it was translated into several languages, including Dutch. One Dutch translation was penned by a Jewish convert who later reverted to Judaism and faced various accusations relating to his translation. This article focuses on that Dutch translation and the largely unknown personality of its author. The translation and its accompanying paratexts are compared with another eighteenth-century Dutch translation of the same pamphlet, thus shedding light on the translation techniques used, as well as the nature of the work and its intended audience. The translator's multiple identities appear in a diverse corpus of documents under several aliases. In his largely unknown Hebrew apologia, Or le-'et boker , which demonstrates a profound knowledge of Judaism as well as remarkable literary skills, he rewrote the story of his reconversion as a tale of repentance and redemption. Despite the idiosyncrasy of this fascinating life story, which transitions between Christianity and Judaism, the translator should be viewed as belonging to a larger group of less-known eighteenth-century Jewish authors and reformers. The members of this group sought to improve piety and religious education among their coreligionists and shared eighteenth-century Christian pietist notions of religiosity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Before and after a book there is a series of texts around it with different functions; these are the paratexts and they are always present to a greater or lesser extent. As doenças do Brasil, by the Portuguese writer Valter Hugo Mãe, draws attention because it contains paratexts in profusion: titles (of the novel, of the parts and of the chapters), summary, preface, epigraphs, dedication, afterwords, presentation of the author and of the book (on the back cover). In this work is mentioned practically all these paratexts; however, despite it starts from the title of the novel and above all the word diseases (physical and/or metaphorical), it focuses its reflection on the epigraphs, the dedication, and the afterwords. The theoretical references, among others, are the studies of Susan Sontag (1978), Gérard Genette (1987), and Antoine Compagnon (1996). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios de Linguistica del Espanol is the property of University Library of Bern 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 study aims to understand how Chinese audiences have consumed and engaged in BBC's Sherlock as a transcultural fan with the help of digital media. Drawing on the transcultural and gendered fan studies and 36 qualitative interviews, this article interrogates Chinese Sherlock fandom within the hybridised transcultural flow of texts and identity. The key argument is that Chinese Sherlock fans have created a female-dominated fandom that updates the gendered fandom by enriching paratexts of Boys' Love (BL) whilst China's censorship has largely constrained fans' homosexual productivity. On the one hand, the wide application of digital media technologies largely helps Chinese fans to access Sherlock transnationally and contribute to the global Sherlock fandom; on the other, the censoring mediascape in China has restricted fan prosumption, as erotic/homosexual fan work is not regarded as a canonical culture. This study thereby concludes, although Chinese Sherlock fans have been cultivated to circumvent the media censoring mechanism and produce fantexts outside China that features resistance power and fan intelligence, the compromised fan culture is understood as incomplete rebellion because Chinese fans have made concessions and the alternative choices are tacit by the national power itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article intends to discuss Ana Cristina Cesar's correspondence with Luiz Augusto Ramalho while he was studying in London, in 1969. The letters were published in Amor mais que maiúsculo, by the editors of Companhia das Letras, in 2022. Reflections will be made on literary sources and archives that made the publication of the book possible, as well as a conceptual discussion about the concept of correspondence, autobiography, and contemporary Self Writing. Also, the text will look at letters as historical documents and paratexts. For this to happen, the authors André Luiz Anselm (2015), Philippe Artières (2013), Leonor Arfuch (2010), Michel Foucault (1992), Regina Kohlrausch (2015), and Philippe Lejeune (2014), among others, will be used. As a result, the letters are seen as an attempt to remember a love that is about to end. Furthermore, the presence of the Brazil-England relationship and foreign expressions in the correspondence transform them into a paratext for the César's scholars.

As on-demand media claim an increasing amount of the time we spend on digital media, traditional broadcasters have adopted video on-demand (VoD) services as a means of presenting their programmes. This article analyses two Danish VoD services offered by legacy broadcasters – that is, BVoD services. It argues that the traditional features of broadcast television, to communicate liveness and immediacy, are reappropriated in the publishing practices of the BVoD services. With an analytical focus on the use of temporal paratexts, the article finds that whereas both services emphasise liveness and immediacy in their publishing practices, they apply different means of expressing the temporal qualities. These differences can be attributed to organisational differences. Finally, the article concludes that competitiveness, distinctiveness, and the public service identity of the broadcasters are explanatory factors for the reappropriation of time-structured publishing in the two Danish BVoD services DRTV and TV 2 Play.

This study focuses on paratexts as recontextualization tools, specifically prefaces written for (re)translations, and problematizes Turkish (re)translations of modernist novels written in English, which, for reasons of morality, encountered legal difficulties, and were stigmatized, banned, or confiscated in the source culture. Recontextualization resonates with (re)producing ideologies, exposing various agents' deliberate power positions in determining discourse structures within the more general framework of Critical Discourse Analysis. Against this backdrop, this study, which is part of a larger project, has a twofold purpose: a) to evaluate 15 prefaces extracted from (re)translations of 10 modernist novels as a tool for recontextualization; and b) to investigate the preface discourse regarding the transfer of modernist novels into the target culture through the lens of transitivity analysis, based on Halliday's Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) model. SFL proposes that the main system by which experiential meaning is associated with process choices within the framework of ideational meta-function is transitivity; transitivity analysis is therefore applied to the prefaces to unveil the relationships established between the processes and the actors. The analysis of findings revealed that recontextualization was functionalized to create an explicit, rather than an implicit discourse structure through the intensive use of material processes. It concludes that prefaces written to (re)translations in Turkish context, as liminal devices between the fictitious and real worlds, are clearly instrumentalized to position the key players in the adaptation, promotion, and representation of these books within their new cultural context, and thus, were designed to influence the discourse surrounding the transfer of modernist novels into the target culture.

The provision of a translator’s paratext offers greater visibility to the translator and a direct source of information on his/her decisions and intentions. Osório de Oliveira, the translator of the Portuguese version of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, replaces the author’s original preface with one of his own in which he justifies the alterations to the original text, whilst underlining that it was a Portuguese vessel on its way to Brazil which saved the hero from his desperate plight. This paper proposes to examine the reasons for Oliveira’s emphasis on this particular episode, to the detriment of others which were unquestionably more interesting within the context of the hero’s adventures. The date of publication of the translation – 1940 – and consequently of the paratext, provides the principal key to the answer, as the ideology of the Estado Novo was founded on the exaltation of the Portuguese “Discoveries”, underpinning a colonial policy which supposedly justified the retention of the “Overseas Provinces”. The paper discusses the translator’s reasons for intervening in the target text, whilst attempting to evaluate how far the paratext may have mediated the reception of a final version in which the deeds of past heroes were exploited in an attempt to appropriate Defoe’s story.

As revisionist studies have recently shown in the wake of Gérard Genette's Seuils (1987), editorial paratexts in translated works, such as prefaces and illustrations, are valuable documents for capturing the ideological parameters which early modern publishers and translators had to skilfully exploit to promote their work. A case in point is the little known yet important eighteenth-century collection of framed-novelle Les Journées amusantes (1722–31) by Madeleine-Angélique Poisson de Gomez (1684–1776). Through the lens of intertextuality and intericonicity, this article offers a two-part analysis of the paratextual material (verbal and visual) contained in the foreign editions of this work. It evaluates the strategies which 'image-makers' used to ensure the legitimacy of a text which was originally written by a woman. In particular, it highlights transnational instances of dialogic interplay and cultural transfer, allowing for a better understanding of the female writer's status across Europe and revealing the cultural and pedagogical parts which translators, publishers and engravers played in the formation of eighteenth-century European readerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on examples from recent promotional campaigns created by streaming platform Netflix, this article reflects on translation and media paratexts from an interdisciplinary perspective. It includes discussion of marketing approaches, political and commercial constraints and priorities, theoretical frameworks, and future directions in media paratext research. It also introduces and contextualizes the contributions included in the special issue Media Paratexts and Translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analyses Netflix Turkey's media paratexts in which Netflix's foreign productions and Turkish originals are promoted by the creative use of local elements and/or culture-specific references. It aims to identify the role of translation in these paratexts in promoting both Netflix and its shows such as Stranger Things among others in Turkey. It also discusses the functions of these paratexts in relation to their socio-political contexts of production and the wider debates around regulation and censorship in Turkey. The analysis shows that translation and localization in the selected paratexts serve to make the foreign shows relatable, evoke a sentiment of nostalgia and create a sense of belonging. Further, the paratexts on Netflix Turkish originals highlight the untranslatability and culture-specificity of Turkish expressions to appeal to the viewers' national pride, which is arguably informed by a populist approach due to the increasing possibility of restrictions on content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fans' relationship with media product franchises is strongly based on the symbolic value and sense of belonging that nurtures their consumer practices, a fact that indicates the love relationship with these brands. Entertainment brands increasingly resort to paratexts in order to expand their relationship with fans. Thus, the aim of the current research is to investigate how the paratextualization of franchise productions by the entertainment industry is used to trigger love towards their brands. In order to do so, it applied the Foucauldian Discourse Analysis to news reports and information published on websites of three of the most successful brands in the entertainment industry, namely: Star Wars, Wizarding World and Game of Thrones. Based on the results, these brands promote both the value and the continuity of the aforementioned sagas as means to develop an affective brand for their fans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article attempts to answer the following question: why did the author of the apocryphon called 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John choose to efface himself and adopt John as his pseudonym? Why not Peter or Paul? This paper argues that the author of 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John intended to harness the audience attached to John, the seer of Revelation, by taking his name as a pseudonym. This paper sustains this claim by demonstrating that, in antiquity, each author had a specific pool of readers, often made out of friends and accolades of the author. Thus, authors’ names evoke an audience attached to them. When an author takes another person’s name to write under, he does so out of necessity, because he does not have an audience. But, when he takes another’s person name, he does so hoping to trick the audience of the impersonated into reading him. Based on this insight, this article concludes that the author of 1 Apocr. Apoc. John wanted the readers of canonical Revelation to engage with his work and that he achieved his purpose as evinced by the fact that the titles of both works share an uncanny resemblance, ranging from identical titles to similar wording. Since titles in antiquity were given to the works by their readers, the most logical explanation for canonical Revelation and 1 Apocr. Apoc. John having the same titles is that they both shared the same readers. Finally, this article argues that, in line with recent research on the use of pseudepigraphy in Jewish, Christian, and Roman contexts, the author of 1 Apocr. Apoc. John wanted to be read by CR’s readers because he wanted to expand, criticize, rework, and update CR’s eschatological discourse, exemplified by a close reading of how 1 Apocr. Apoc. John criticized, reworked, and updated CR’s presentation of the resurrection to bring it in harmony with late Christian reflection on the subject.

This paper studies the Spanish translation of William Styron’s The Confessions of Nat Turner. It observes the effects that institutional and self-censorship have had in Andrés Bosch’s version, first published in 1968 by Lumen as Las Confesiones de Nat Turner. Presented as the fictional autobiography of a historical figure, the novel is based on a failed revolt that took place in a Virginia plantation in 1831. The source context is described and contrasted with the target one, paying attention to the paratexts that have conditioned the novel’s reception in Spain. Accessing the General Archive of the Administration shows that Bosch’s translation was self-censored in a possible attempt to avoid the institutional intervention that would have delayed the book’s publication. Research also shows that this same version is the one being republished in the early twenty-first century.

This article demonstrates how the concept of paratexts can be employed in the analysis of unfolding sports events. Drawing on the work of Jonathan Gray and Matt Hills, it reflects on the "extended presence" of sports events across media, space, and time - how meaning is created before, during, and after their apparent conclusion, and how their mediated "centres" appear to move in the process. By way of illustration, it examines a boxing event in early 2023 involving the popular British boxers Chris Eubank Jr. and Liam Smith; however, it focuses on the events before the event - namely, the preceding press conference and weigh-in - and suggests that these "entryway events" were paratextually significant in shaping expectations and attitudes towards the "main event". The article also demonstrates how sports events feed into wider processes of social inclusion and exclusion, often acting as lightning rods for public discussions of socio-political issues, such as race, class, gender, and (in this case) sexual orientation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In an understudied cluster of films from the 1920s in Spain that feature the tumultuous lives of female music-hall entertainers, posters, postcards, and magazines not only mirror the shape of windows, doors and thresholds, but also direct the flow of circulating images of women. These portable, paper media immobilize or propel women's bodies into motion, constituting portals that enable or disrupt fame, security and "happiness." Rectangular artifacts both don the walls, windows, and cabinets in these films' mise-en-scène, and drive the story, character development, and the production of gender and racial identity. These films show characters interacting with posters, postcards, and magazines in a way that becomes as determining as the gripping plots, enabling women to pivot between stark, atavistic, or impoverished rurality and electrifying urban spaces. In this article, I examine the governing status of paratexts and the female star image in early Spanish film culture by tracing the history of La gitana blanca, a film directed by Ricardo de Baños initially released in 1919 and then reedited and redistributed internationally in 1923. In its opening moments, La gitana blanca offers us a view into how paratexts not only saturated the media ecology of the 1920s but also were "responsible for popular culture's encounters with countless story worlds." In the context of Spanish film historiography's master narratives, in which cultural hierarchies remain tightly enmeshed with gendered and racialized logics, a cross-media perspective proves instrumental in revealing the extent to which film culture mediated the real and fictive lives of women. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The apocryphal account of the birth and childhood of Mary, mother of Jesus (and to a lesser degree Jesus himself) known most commonly as the Protevangelium of James is one of the most influential early Christian texts outside of the New Testament. It is witnessed substantially in the Greek manuscript tradition as well as in several other languages. In the process of its transmission in Greek from the late third century or the fourth century into the late medieval/early modern period, various titular formulae were attached to the text. This article examines the earliest manuscript witness for Prot. Jas, Papyrus Bodmer V, and argues that the title present here is reflective of the complexities surrounding the perceived genre and function of early Christian literature in addition to the creation and continuation of traditions encompassing authorial identity and legitimacy. The Prot. Jas demonstrates well the hermeneutical weight often carried by titular paratexts as literature is transmitted, and regardless of whether P. Bodmer V represents continuity or evolution in this regard, it offers a window onto the flexibility of genre and its representation in early Christianity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the context of the Spanish edition of the Ksawery Pruszyński’s collection of reportages, En la España roja, written during the writer’s trip to Spain as a press correspondent in 1936, in the early months of the civil war. Despite the passage of time, Pruszyński’s observations still hold interest and offer insight to the Spanish reading public. The aim of the article is to examine how the ongoing debates surrounding the Spanish Civil War, intertwined with postmemorial discourses, influence both the publisher’s presentation of the book and its reception by critics. To accomplish this, the paratexts of the Spanish edition of Pruszyński’s work will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Qur'ān translations are forms of traditional or rational tafāsīr [exegeses]. Laleh Bakhtiar, an Iranian-American who converted from Christianity to Islam, applied a rational approach in her Qur'ān translation. Extensive research has surveyed Bakhtiar's feminist perspectives (Kidwai, 2018) and her reliance on dictionaries (Hassen, 2012). However, the investigation of the influence of her Sufī views on her translation has not been previously addressed. This paper is an empirical account of the impact of Bakhtiar's Sufī belief in futuwwa on her translation choices. To achieve this goal, Bakhtiar's translations of the verses that include the term فَتًى fatā [a young man] and its derivatives are analytically compared to Sufī and Shiʿī translations to analyse Bakhtiar's choices and highlight her adaptation of allegorical hermeneutics. The underpinning approach of this paper is a combination of Gerard Genette's paratexts (1997) and Hussein Abdul-Raof's criteria of the Sufī approach to Qur'ānic exegesis (2012). The main finding is that by adopting al-bāṭin [esoteric] meaning and rejecting aẓ-ẓahir [exoteric] meaning, Bakhtiar goes far away from orthodox Islamic traditions in her interpretation of the Qur'ān. Moreover, through applying the concept futuwwa to men and women, she deconstructs the patriarchal framework, in which the virtue of futuwwa exists, and expands the connotative meaning of this aspect, which results in sending radical messages completely different from those in the source text. Future researchers can broaden the scope of the analysis and examine a plethora of contemporary Qur'ān translations to explore the effect of the translators' beliefs on their interpretations of the Qur'ān. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engaging with a text allows one to enter a flow state through the actions or reading/viewing a narrative or event. Spoilers, which provide information about the text but bypassing the intended reading path as set out by the author, can serve to interrupt a state of flow, dissuade one from even attempting to interact with the text at hand, or catch one’s eye to an interesting aspect that would normally be hidden. In this study, I classify spoilers through Genette’s concept of paratexts and how they affect one’s wellbeing through the notions of Seligman’s PERMA theory (Positive Emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishments, with specific focus on aspects of engagement. Throughout this work, I denote different aspects of spoilers as found in examples of popular culture to establish how these paratexts can hinder or help in one’s engagement with a potential text and how these can affect one’s wellbeing. In order to help readers avoid unwanted spoilers. I also include how different elements of digital media can be adapted in order that one obtain such information only if one desires it to make an informed decision as to whether or not engage with a specific text.