4.3.

5 Thematic Account

From line 60 to line 73, the king Flecknoe stops to weep in rapture for his heir, Shadwell, who is now to
be anointed on his coronation with dullness rather than with the oil common to coronation of English
kings. The sixty fifth line alludes to the fears excited by the Popish Plot. The coronation venue will be
near London Wall where stood a long ago a Barbican, a Roman watchtower. The watchtower is now
ruined and place for mother prostitutes and inferior actors.

Problematic Account

The main challenge is convey the situational picture that Dryden depicted about the ancient watchtower
of "Augusta" where "brothel houses" are a hallmark (from line 64 to line 73), together with a problematic
allusion "The fair Augusta much to fears inclined" (line 65).

Dryden portrays an image that evoke a situational and temporal effect: the reader is predisposed to pass in
time to imagine the place that has been situated before the present-time brothels of "Augusta", that is the
ancient watchtower "Barbican". The translator should therefore be aware that the effect to be produced by
whichever equivalent Arabic image chosen will be creating a time-traveling visual stimulus to the Arab
reader. Especially, the Arabic image after having successfully transferred the unknown English
geographical referents- "Augusta" and "Barbican"- should elicit from the Arabic reader similar reaction to
that intended from the English reader. Namely, the Arab reader will appreciate in the same way that the
English reader is expected to the esthetic satirical implications of the image (vulgarity of the place on
which Shadwell's throne is constructed)

The ST image is then expanded to evoke the scene of prostitutes taking up the vast spaces of the venue,
and the translator will be careful to render the figurative expression "polluted joys". However, the
translator will find special difficulty to deal with the pun that the expression "undisturbed by watch"
creates. To illustrate, the strumpets are turning blind eye to the watchful eyes of the soldiers occupying
the watchtower when they sleep at night, yet it is ironically known from the preceding lines that the
watchtower does no longer exist and has in the present time been a pile of rubbles. Accordingly, the
resultant irony produced by the pun is a challenge for the translator to convey to the Arab reader.

In addition to the challenging image, line 64 and line 65 uses culturally foreign terms and figurative
words to depict a subtle image. To illustrate, "fears" alludes to to those excited by the Popish Plot, a
historical event foreign to the Arab reader. Synecdochally personified, the people of London are inclined
to fear, and for this reason Augustus binds the bricks and rebuilds the constituents of the city's wall lest
the danger of the Popish plot invade the safety and peace of the city. The image is further problematic due
to the underlying satirical fact that London Wall has ceased defensive fortifications and danger alerts
before the time of Shadwell, Flecknoe and Dryden, then satire manifests itself in the subsequent
satirically nostalgic implication of the subsequent expression "of yore". Accordingly, the translator is
challenged by a visual image that evoke culturally foreign historical and geographical elements of satire.

4.3.6 Thematic Account

From line 74 to line 86, in vicinity is a training school for young actors, Nursery, educating and
graduating future queens and heroes, or inept prostitutes and actors. More importantly, people resembling
Maximin- the cruel emperor in Dryden's Tyrannic Love (1669) notorious for his bombast, come from the

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