Literature in Context
2
Lecture 10
Postcolonial Studies
Literatures in English
Literary Translation
Postcolonial Studies
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism
Post-colonialism (postcolonial theory, post-colonial
theory) is an intellectual discourse that consists of
reactions to, and analysis of, the cultural legacy of
colonialis.
Postcolonialism comprises a set of theories found
amongst anthropology, architecture, philosophy,
film, political science, human geography, sociology,
feminism, religious and theological studies, and
literature.
Postcolonial Studies
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism
The ultimate goal of post-colonialism is accounting for
and combating the residual effects of colonialism on
cultures.
It is not simply concerned with salvaging past
worlds, but learning how the world can move beyond
this period together, towards a place of mutual respect.
Postcolonial Studies
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism
Post-colonialist theorists recognize that many of the
assumptions which underlie the "logic" of colonialism
are still active forces today.
Exposing and deconstructing the racist, imperialist
nature of these assumptions will remove their power of
persuasion and coercion.
Postcolonial Studies
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism
A key goal of post-colonial theorists is clearing
space for multiple voices. This is especially true of
those voices that have been previously silenced by
dominant ideologies – subalterns.
Edward Said, in his book Orientalism, provides a clear
picture of the ways social scientists, specifically
Orientalists, can disregard the views of those they
actually study – preferring instead to rely on the
intellectual superiority of themselves and their peers.
Postcolonial Studies
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism as a literary theory (with a critical
approach), deals with literature produced in countries
that once were colonies of other countries.
Colonized people, especially of the British Empire,
attended British universities and with their access to
education, created this new criticism. Following the
breakup of the Soviet Union during the late 20th
century, its former republics became the subject of this
study as well.
Postcolonial Studies
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism
Postcolonial theory provides a framework that
destabilizes dominant discourses in the West,
challenges inherent assumptions, and critiques
the legacies of colonialism.
Postcolonial Studies
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism
Postcolonialism deals with cultural identity in
colonized societies: the dilemmas of developing a
national identity after colonial rule;
•
the ways in which writers articulate and
celebrate that identity;
•
the ways in which the knowledge of the
colonized (subordinated) people has been generated
and used to serve the colonizer's interests;
•
the ways in which the colonizer's literature has
justified colonialism via images of the colonised as a
perpetually inferior people, society and culture.
Postcolonial Studies
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism
Founding works on postcolonialism
• Edward Said: Orientalism (1978)
• Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (1993)
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, "Can the Subaltern
Speak?" (1988)
• Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak: "The Postcolonial
Critic" (1990)
• Homi Bhabha: The Location of Culture (1994)
• Declan Kiberd: "Inventing Ireland" (1995)
Charles Tennyson Turner
(1808-1879)
Letty’s Globe
When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year,
And her young artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a colour'd sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old empires peep'd
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap'd,
And laugh'd and prattled in her world-wide bliss;
But when we turn'd her sweet unlearned eye
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry-'Oh! yes, I see it, Letty's home is there!'
And while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.
Charles Tennyson Turner
(1808-1879)
Letty’s Globe
When Letty had scarce pass'd her third glad year,
And her young artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a colour'd sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old empires peep'd
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap'd,
And laugh'd and prattled in her world-wide bliss;
But when we turn'd her sweet unlearned eye
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry 'Oh! yes, I see it, Letty's home is there!'
And while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.
Victorian Terrestrial Globes
Victorian Terrestrial Globe
Map of the British Empire, 1922
Map of the British Empire, 1886
William Butler Yeats
(1865-1939)
Leda and the Swan
A sudden blow: the great wings beating still
Above the staggering girl, her thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill,
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
How can those terrified vague fingers push
The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?
And how can body, laid in that white rush,
But feel the strange heart beating where it lies?
Yeats, cont.
A shudder in the loins engenders there
The broken wall, the burning roof and tower
And Agamemnon dead.
Being so caught up,
So mastered by the brute blood of the air,
Did she put on his knowledge with his power
Before the indifferent beak could let her drop?
Leda and the Swan. The work is probably an old copy after a
painting of this subject by Michelangelo which he made in 1530, in
tempera, for the Duke of Ferrara, but which was sent instead to
the King of France. National Gallery, London
Leda and the Swan. The work is probably an old copy after a
painting of this subject by Michelangelo which he made in 1530, in
tempera, for the Duke of Ferrara, but which was sent instead to
the King of France. National Gallery, London
Leda and the Swan. Engraving after Michelangelo’s lost
painting by Cornelus Bos (1506-1564)
British Museum, London
Literatures in English
Postcolonial Studies
• explores the various facets—textual, figural, spatial,
historical, political and economic—of the colonial
encounter, and the ways in which this encounter
shaped the West and non-West alike
• investigations from many disciplines, as well as a
theoretical perspective from which to view a variety
of concerns
http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/13688790.asp
Literatures in English
English literary texts representing other cultures
– the living conscience and public depository of the
cultural memories of the world,
telling the story,
incorporating the way of thinking,
and mirroring the language of other cultures.
Some examples
V. S. Naipaul: A Bend in the River (1979), narrated by an
Indian Muslim in an unnamed African country after
independence, observing the rapid changes in his
homeland with an outsider's distance.
Salman Rushdie: Midnight's Children (1981), key
events in the history of India.
Kazuo Ishiguro: A Pale View Hills (1982), narrated by a
Japanese widow living in England.
Tibor Fischer: Under the Frog (1992), the 1950s and
1956 in Hungary.
Some examples
R. K. Narayan: The Guide (1958), a novel based in
Malgudi, the fictional town in South India. The novel
describes the transformation of the protagonist, Raju
from a tour guide to a spiritual guide and become
one of the greatest holy man of India.
Derek Walcott: Omeros (1990), an epic poem set on the
Caribbean island of St. Lucia, drawing on Homer,
Virgil, and Dante, presenting themes such as
colonialism, historiography, homecoming, paternity.
Derek Walcott
(1930)
Salman Rushdie
(1947)
Kazuo Ishiguro
(1954)
Translation Studies
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_studies
Translation studies is an interdiscipline containing
elements of social science and the humanities, dealing
with the systematic study of the theory, the description
and the application of translation, interpreting or both
these activities.
Translation studies can be normative (prescribing rules
for the application of these activities) or descriptive.
Translation Studies
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_studies
As an interdisciplinary discipline, translation studies
borrows much from the different fields of study that
support translation.
These include comparative literature, computer
science, history, linguistics, philology, philosophy,
semiotics, terminology, and so forth.
Note that occasionally in English writers will use the
term translatology to refer to translation studies.
Translation Studies
Basnett, Susan: “Literary Research and Translation.”
In: da Sousa Correa, Della; Owens, W. R., eds.: The
Handbook to Literary Research. London, New York:
Routledge, 2010, 167-183
Translation Studies
Globalisation
Global mobility – mass movement of people,
movement of capital, commodities, information, and
images
Intercultural communication
Translation Studies
Translation as linguistic process
An ancient form of textual practice
The transposition of a text that has come into being in
one context into a different one
The process involves reshaping and rewriting the text
Negotiation between the original, the source and its
destination, the target
Translation Studies
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_studies
CULTURAL TRANSLATION is a new area of interest in
the field of translation studies.
Cultural translation is a concept used in cultural
studies to denote the process of transformation,
linguistic or otherwise, in a given culture.
The concept uses linguistic translation as a tool or
metaphor in analysing the nature of transformation in
cultures. For example, ethnography is considered a
translated narrative of an abstract living culture.
Translation Studies
Cultural Translation
Continually reminds the reader of difference.
A text produced for one set of readers is rendered to a
different set of readers with different expectations,
aesthetic concepts, embedded in different cultural
Context.
The translator has to take into account not only the
linguistic dimensions but the problem of diverse layers
of meaning in the different cultural contexts
Translation Studies
Question of equivalence
No translation is identical with the original
Literal, word to word translation – is it possible?
Restructuring another author’s work – to what extent is
it ethical?
Translation Studies
How to translate regional and social dialects?
Cockney English, Yorkshire accent, Hiberno-English,
working-class language usage, Black American slang,
18th century sailors’ jargon, Loiner skinhead talk, etc.
Translation Studies
Translating ancient texts into modern
To archaize or to modernize
To historicize or to contemporize
Ancient texts brought to contemporary readers – to
show how an ancient work would have been written
had its author lived now
Virgil’s Aeneid (29-19 BC)
translated by John Dryden (1697)
Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;
His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
[Opening lines of Book I]
Alexander Pope’s translation of Homer’s
Iliad (1715-1720)
Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring
Of woes unnumber’d, heavenly goddess, sing!
That wrath which hurl’d to Pluto’s gloomy reign
The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;
Whose limbs unburied on the naked shore,
Devouring dogs and hungry vultures tore.
Since great Achilles and Atrides strove,
Such was the sovereign doom, and such the will of
Jove!
[Opening lines of Book I]
Translation Studies
Postcolonial translation - ethical issues
Reassessment of translation strategies from
postcolonial perspective
Translators need to become more visible
Translation foreignising and domesticating
(Lawrence Venuti after Friedrich Schleiermacher)
•
Domesticating – as if the translation had been
written in the target language, appropriation, the
original erased
• Foreignising – to retain the foreign traces
Translation Studies
Writing and translating are twin processes, engaged in
constant interaction
Crossing linguistic and cultural/national boundaries
through translation
Translation as reconciliation
Michael Longley: Ceasefire
In his poem titled Ceasefire Michael Longley (1939)
draws on Homer's The Iliad. Longley makes an inter
textual allusion to King Priam's request to Achilles for
the release of the dead body of his son Hector killed in
Battle during the Trojan Wars. (The Iliad, Book XXIV).
Longley's sonnet was published in 1994, the year
which saw important Republican and Loyalist para
military ceasefires in the Ulster Troubles in Norhern
Ireland.
Michael Longley: Ceasefire
Ceasefire has often been read in the context of political
events in Ireland known as 'The Peace Process'.
Longley has translated this part of Homer’s epic poem
into the 14 line English sonnet form.
Michael Longley
Michael Longley: Ceasefire
I
Put in mind of his own father and moved to tears
Achilles took him by the hand and pushed the old king
Gently away, but Priam curled up at his feet and
Wept with him until their sadness filled the building.
II
Taking Hector’s corpse into his own hands Achilles
Made sure it was washed and, for the old king’s sake,
Laid out in uniform, ready for Priam to carry
Wrapped like a present home to Troy at daybreak.
III
When they had eaten together, it pleased them both
To stare at each other’s beauty as lovers might,
Achilles built like a god, Priam good-looking still
And full of conversation, who earlier had sighed:
IV
Homer: Iliad, Book XXIV
John Dryden’s translation, excerpts
“Think of thy father, and this face behold!
See him in me, as helpless and as old!
Though not so wretched: there he yields to me,
The first of men in sovereign misery!
Thus forced to kneel, thus grovelling to embrace
The scourge and ruin of my realm and race;
Suppliant my children’s murderer to implore,
And kiss those hands yet reeking with their gore!”
[…]
Homer: Iliad, Book XXIV
John Dryden’s translation, excerpts
“Move me no more, (Achilles thus replies,
While kindling anger sparkled in his eyes,)
Nor seek by tears my steady soul to bend:
To yield thy Hector I myself intend:
For know, from Jove my goddess-mother came,
(Old Ocean’s daughter, silver-footed dame,)
Nor comest thou but by heaven; nor comest alone,
Some god impels with courage not thy own:
No human hand the weighty gates unbarr’d,
Nor could the boldest of our youth have dared
To pass our outworks, or elude the guard. […]”
Homer: Iliad, Book XXIV
John Dryden’s translation, excerpts
When now the rage of hunger was repress’d,
The wondering hero eyes his royal guest:
No less the royal guest the hero eyes,
His godlike aspect and majestic size;
Here, youthful grace and noble fire engage;
And there, the mild benevolence of age.
Thus gazing long, the silence neither broke,
(A solemn scene!) at length the father spoke:
“Permit me now, beloved of Jove! to steep
My careful temples in the dew of sleep:
For, since the day that number’d with the dead
My hapless son, the dust has been my bed;
Homer: Iliad, Book XXIV
John Dryden’s translation, excerpts
Then call the handmaids, with assistant toil
To wash the body and anoint with oil,
Apart from Priam: lest the unhappy sire,
Provoked to passion, once more rouse to ire
The stern Pelides; and nor sacred age,
Nor Jove’s command, should check the rising rage.
This done, the garments o’er the corse they spread;
Achilles lifts it to the funeral bed:
Then, while the body on the car they laid,
He groans, and calls on loved Patroclus’ shade […]
Translation Studies
Seamus Heaney
• Sweeney Astray. A version from the Irish (1983)
12th century Irish myth from the historical cycle
• Beowulf (1999)
• 8th century Old English epic poem
• Robert Henryson: The Testament of Cresseid (2004)
• 15th century Scottish epic poem
• Laments, a cycle of Polish Renaissance elegies by
Jan Kochanowski, translated with Stanisław
Barańczak (1995)
Seamus Heaney, Michael Longley and Ciaran Carson are pictured
with Arts Council Chairman Rosemary Kelly and Chief Executive
Roisin McDonough at MacNeice House in Belfast.
Michael Longley
Colin Davidson
&
portraits by
&
Seamus Heaney
Edward McGuire
Translation Studies
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_studies
Bhabha, Homi: The Location of Culture. London & New
York: Routledge, 1994
Bassnett, Susan: Translation Studies. London & New
York: Routledge, (1980) 2002
Steiner, George: After Babel. Oxford University Press,
1975
Venuti, Lawrence: The Translator's Invisibility: A
History of Translation. London & New York:
Routledge, 1995
George Steiner