Thematic volume cfp
CALL FOR PAPERS
Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance vol. 34 no 48 (2026)
Multicultural Reimaginings: Contemporary Fictional Afterlives of Shakespeare
edited by
Michela Compagnoni, Roma Tre University (michela.compagnoni@uniroma3.it)
Urszula Kizelbach, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań (urszulak@amu.edu.pl)
In the tapestry of contemporary literature, the works of William Shakespeare have found new life, texture, and resonance. As A. J. Hartley points out, “Shakespeare has been a recurring preoccupation of the modern novel for almost as long as it has existed in English. Indeed, the rise of the English novel paralleled the rise of Shakespeare’s own cultural star.” Importantly, Shakespeare has become part of the world’s cultural heritage, transcending regional and national boundaries, and speaks to readers and writers from all continents and backgrounds. This special issue of Multicultural Shakespeare delves into the rich and diverse landscape of contemporary fiction writers – whether British, European, American, Asian, or from any other region – who have boldly appropriated Shakespeare’s plays by weaving his themes, characters, and narratives into the fabric of contemporary storytelling.
This volume seeks to illuminate the myriad ways in which Shakespeare’s oeuvre, as an inexhaustible catalyst for afterlives, continues to inspire and shape modern fiction that crosses national, linguistic, and cultural borders. It encourages dialogue that bridges the gap between the Early Modern era and today, welcoming perspectives and voices beyond traditional or Eurocentric frameworks. This special issue also intends to address the cultural and social politics at stake in revisiting Shakespeare, taking as its starting point the very ideas of the ‘original’ and of authorship as an individual or collaborative process, as shaped by diverse histories and contexts. Although “unsurprisingly, the particular set of intertexts provided by the dominant, enduring, transhistorical and cross-cultural signifier of ‘Shakespeare’ and his work has provoked considerable intellectual interest,” as Julie Sanders remarks, critical studies with a markedly European take are still lacking. Notable examples include Ian McEwan’s Nutshell, a thrilling reimagining of Hamlet as a self-conscious foetus, and Ali Smith’s Seasonal Quartet, which transposes themes and imagery from Shakespeare’s romances to a contemporary setting to explore how Twenty-first-century authors within and beyond the UK navigate the challenges of honouring Shakespeare’s legacy while crafting novel narratives that resonate with today’s readers and contribute to global literary memory.
We invite contributors from all regions, backgrounds, and disciplines to engage with a range of topics, including but not limited to the rewriting of biographies, the reinterpretation of historical contexts, and the transformation of Shakespearean plays into contemporary fiction that rethinks them in multiple ways – sometimes even distorting them or shifting the balance of perspective from a main character to another. Our aim is to foster a truly international dialogue that reflects the broad and evolving impact of Shakespeare’s work in twenty-first-century fiction around the world.
References
Andrew James Hartley (ed.), Shakespeare and Millennial Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2018.
Julie Sanders, Novel Shakespeares: Twentieth-century Women Novelists and Appropriation. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2001.
Important deadlines:
- Deadline for abstracts (250-300 words): 28 February 2026
- Notification of acceptance: 5 March 2026
- Deadline for articles: 30 June 2026
Complete article submissions should be sent to the Guest Editors for an initial round of peer-reviewing as well as through the OJS system: Submissions | Multicultural Shakespeare: Translation, Appropriation and Performance (lodz.pl)
Each article submission should include an abstract (ca. 250-300 words) and a list of ca. 4-6 keywords. Articles should be between 7,000 and 9,000 words in length, and they should follow the formatting style of the journal (please see Instructions for Authors, which are to be found here https://czasopisma.uni.lodz.pl/szekspir/editorial_instructions).
Theatre and book reviews should be sent directly to the Theatre and Book Reviewers.
Michela Compagnoni is a Tenure-Track Researcher at Roma Tre University, Italy. Her work focuses on Shakespeare and early modern theatre, especially on representations of monstrosity, paradigms of motherhood, applied Shakespeare, adaptation, and Shakespeare in contemporary British fiction. She is the author of I mostri di Shakespeare: figure del deforme e dell’informe (Carocci, 2022). Her research has appeared or is forthcoming in Shakespeare, Shakespeare Bulletin, Critical Survey, Shakespeare Survey, Cahiers Élisabéthains, Memoria di Shakespeare, Anglistica AION, Textus, and in edited collections including Shakespeare/Nature (Bloomsbury Arden Shakespeare) and Roman Women in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries (Medieval Institute Publications).
Urszula Kizelbach is an Assistant Professor in the Faculty of English at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań, Poland. Her research centres on literary pragmatics, with a particular focus on the pragmatic analysis of Early Modern drama and contemporary fiction. She has a growing interest in historical pragmatics and stylistics. She serves as Membership Secretary and Polish Ambassador for the Poetics and Linguistics Association (PALA). She is the author of The Pragmatics of Early Modern Politics: Power and Kingship in Shakespeare’s History Plays (Brill, 2014), which examines Shakespeare’s history plays through the lens of sociological role-theory and linguistic (im)politeness. Her most recent book, (Im)politeness in McEwan’s Fiction: Literary Pragma-Stylistics (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), explores pragmatics in the analysis of Ian McEwan’s style in fiction, addressing both intradiegetic and extradiegetic levels of literary communication. She is an Editorial Board Member of the Cambridge Elements in Stylistics series.
