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Tackling translation: why translation criticism should be historically grounded
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Kennedy, Camille. Tackling translation: why translation criticism should be historically grounded. Retrieved from https://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-wmj8-6p07

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TitleTackling translation: why translation criticism should be historically grounded
NameKennedy, Camille (author); Swenson, James (chair); Williams, Alan (member); Shaw, Mary (member); Wickhamsmith, Simon (member); Parker, Andrew (member); Rutgers University; School of Graduate Studies
Date Created2022
Other Date2022-05 (degree)
SubjectFrench literature, Translation studies, English literature, 19th century literary translation, Austen translations, Balzac, François-Victor Hugo, Montolieu, Shakespeare translations
Extent327 pages
DescriptionThis dissertation argues that evaluations of translations should historically situate the works they examine. Judging historical translations by their adherence to modern translative goals is a legitimate form of criticism, but can fruitfully be supplemented with modes of criticism that analyze translations as literary works in themselves. All too often, literary works are grouped into overly-simplistic and anachronistic categories—translation-adaptation-original work—and translations are judged by standards their critics falsely presume to be timeless. But just as literary genres are not stagnant, neither are literary modes more broadly conceived. Importantly, conceptualizations of the task of the translator are closely linked to conceptualizations of authorship and the nature of literary production and the two evolve in relation to each other. The styles of various translators can and should be situated in relation to contemporary competing understandings of translation and authorship and in relation to the evolving modes of derivative and non-derivative writing.In this dissertation, I take three texts from the 19th century and elucidate how each work would have appeared in the literary field as its author and readers conceived it. I try to show that a text’s precise place in that field is an important source of the text’s meaning. In Part I, I examine the first full French translation of a Jane Austen novel, Isabelle de Montolieu’s Raison et sensibilité. It can be considered a failure of translation on the one hand, but it should also be considered a delightful early 19th century loose translation and the historical importance and enduring value of such translations should not be minimized.
In Part II, I turn to an original work—Honoré de Balzac’s Comédie humaine. I show that Balzac’s claims to originality can be interpreted as polemical rather than as purely descriptive in light of contemporary debates over the nature of authorship and translation. I argue that the Comédie’s presentation of itself as not-a-translation is an under-appreciated and significant aspect of the work’s meaning. In Part III, I examine François-Victor Hugo’s Œuvres complètes de William Shakespeare. Because critics judge the work from within its own theoretical paradigm, they fail to see the translation as an expression and product of one historically-bound conception of literature and of the author-translator relationship: that of Romantic-Generation thinkers. I show that the history of Shakespeare translation in France is not irrelevant to the development of Romantic thinkers’ thought and that François-Victor’s translation is as much a product of that thought as a contribution to its popularization. It can be seen as a paradigmatic text of the Romantic movement, and not simply as a more or less transparent window onto Shakespeare’s writing.
NotePh.D.
NoteIncludes bibliographical references
Genretheses
Persistent URLhttps://doi.org/doi:10.7282/t3-wmj8-6p07
LanguageEnglish
CollectionSchool of Graduate Studies Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Organization NameRutgers, The State University of New Jersey
RightsThe author owns the copyright to this work.
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