Concentric: Studies in English Literature and Linguistics
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://rportal.lib.ntnu.edu.tw/handle/20.500.12235/219
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Item The Hugos and the Translation of Shakespeare into French, Texts and Cultural and Historical Contexts(英語學系, 2021-09-??) Jonathan Locke HartShakespeare did not go easily into French. Voltaire was ambivalent about him as he helped to introduce him into France, especially when he was in exile in England, but he also had reservations about Shakespeare not being neo-classical or, to put it another way, "barbaric." This neo-classical ambivalence also occurred among the English during the Restoration, after 1660, when Charles II returned from France to England and was restored to the throne. John Dryden and Alexander Pope, for instance, were ambivalent about Shakespeare. With Romanticism, Shakespeare became more popular in France, and Victor Hugo and his son, François-Victor Hugo, were instrumental in establishing Shakespeare in France, with the father, the great writer, lending a preface to his son's work and the son undertaking the work of translating Shakespeare systematically in 18 volumes. This article will focus most on the father's preface in the first volume and on the son's translations of the Sonnets in volume 15. The reason for this choice and method is that the pioneering work in the first phases of literary translation needs close examination, what I call the establishment of translation or reputation.Item Issues of Transcultural Mobility in Three Recent French Balcony Scenes(英語學系, 2021-09-??) Stephanie MercierRomeo and Juliet's translation and staging by Olivier Py (2011), Pascal and Antoine Collin and David Bobee (2012), and Éric Ruf, who staged FrançoisVictor Hugo's 1868 version of the play (2016-17), provide a stimulating illustration of recent French translations/adaptations of the Balcony Scene in particular. I examine instances of verbal and non-verbal translation of the canonical texts through such elements such as props, costume, gesture, posture, and the body. They all bring to mind Stephen Greenblatt's concept of "cultural mobility"—first formulated as "cultural transfer" by historians Michel Espagne and Michael Werner in the late 1980s to account for interaction and relations between France and Germany. The scenes particularly seemed to defy previous notions of foreignization or domestication, where the source culture is seen as the "self" and the target culture as the "other," and where the process of domestication tends to erase all "foreignness" from the former. Here, I explorehow just three instances of one of the most iconic scenes in Shakespeare is emblematic of a more general cultural mobility in French theatre, thanks to the choice (or choice not) to incorporate French contextual elements in Gallic productions of Shakespeare. I discuss, through the lens of cultural transfer, how the translations repeat or redefine canonical material, and how they show FrancoBritish stages in contact with one another within the context of contemporary French theatre.Item On Modernizing the Language of Romeo and Juliet for Finnish Teenagers(英語學系, 2021-09-??) Nely KeinänenThis article examines a recent production of Julia and Romeo at the Finnish National Theater (2018) as an example of innovative linguistic adaptation, accomplished through the use of style variations and a touch of rewriting. While most of the FNT Finnish text is based on Marja-Leena Mikkola's poetic translation (WSOY 2006), the dramaturg Anna Viitala, working closely with the director and actors, added a layer of colloquial, teenage language. Features include tiny insertions, such as vou [wow]," okei [OK], and phrases teens use with each other or to annoy their parents. Sometimes a single poetic line is replaced with a shorter and more colloquial speech, framed by much more poetic text. In a larger piece of rewriting, Romeo and Juliet's shared sonnet is turned into a hilarious poem Romeo is writing on love, drawn in part from Troilus and Cressida. For the most part, these juxtapositions of colloquial language added a comic touch, inviting teenage audience members to relate to the characters. But they were also effectively used to heighten tragedy, as for example in the simple repetition of a Finnish word for hello and goodbye, hei, which Romeo and Juliet awkwardly said to each other when they first met, and which was repeated three more times later in the play at key moments. The analysis points to the significant role stylistic variation can have in theatrical translation and adaptation, and suggests translators think beyond a simple continuum between archaizing and modernizing as strategies for translating historical texts.Item Untitled(英語學系, 2020-03-??) Peter D. MathewsThe ambivalence at the heart of Rachel Kadish’s third novel, The Weight of Ink(2017), comes from the tension between Kadish’s exploration of Jewish identity,on the one hand, and her position as a feminist on the other. Kadish thus usesthe form of the historical novel to critique patriarchal traditions in Jewishculture that exclude women from the domain of scholarship and philosophicalthought. The Weight of Ink weaves a complex narrative contrasting the life of atwenty-first-century historian, Helen Watt, to the fierce intellect of EsterVelazquez, a female scribe from the seventeenth century, who is forced todevelop her philosophy secretly under a series of male pseudonyms. This essaystarts out by examining the delicate balance required for this kind of culturalcritique, for while Kadish excoriates the past ill-treatment of women andhomosexuals, she nonetheless is also clearly proud of her identity as a Jewishwoman. The second section of this paper looks at the extent to which Kadishlaunches a successful feminist analysis of Jewish culture and traditions. Herstrongest points come when she turns the logic of this tradition back on itself:the very existence of Ester’s intellect or Alvaro’s homosexuality, she argues,are proof that such things are ordained by divine will rather than itscontradiction. The conclusion of the paper explores the limitations of Kadish’sapproach, focusing in particular on the way she creates a biological tie betweenEster and Shakespeare. This narrative twist appropriates Ester to the realm ofthe patriarchal law, encapsulating the irresolvable tension between Kadish’sJewishness and her feminist politics.Item The Crime Scene of Revenge Tragedy(英語學系, 2012-03-??) Carol Mejia LaPerleAnalyzing the parallel gestures of ritualistic brutality deployed in the cannibal banquet of Seneca’s Thyestes and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, I reveal how the genre of revenge tragedies is simultaneously an instance of, and challenge to, Georges Bataille’s socio-economic theory of excess within a general economy. Excess, and not scarcity, is the motive and the condition for revenge. Both revengers react to a surplus of energy, or what I will call the “excess of possibilities,” that threatens autonomy. Thus, the victims of revenge embody the excess of possibilities in the plays since they are reminders of the contingency, and potential indistinguishability, of the agents of revenge. Sacrificial cannibalism emerges as the revenger’s means for autonomous differentiation, thus eliminating the unbearable interchangeability generated by surplus. Furthermore, by theorizing the excess of possibilities as the underlying pressure driving Atreus as a Senecan revenge figure, I argue that the citation of a specifically Senecan cannibal banquet, appropriated in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, is a gesture by the author to sacrifice, and thus gratuitously consume, the surplus violence generated by the act of representation itself.Item Moral Economy and the Politics of Food Riots in Coriolanus(英語學系, 2010-09-??) Elyssa Y. ChengFood riots in the Elizabethan-Jacobean period were an explosive expression of discontent over the threat of food scarcity and starvation. They were ritualisticacts used by the commoners to compel the authorities to meet the standards of moral economy and to respect the plebeians' legitimate right to eat. In Coriolanus, Shakespeare highlights contemporary Jacobean food riots by rewriting and transferring the belly fable incident of usury riots into food riots and by repetitively referring to famine, hunger, and food hoarding in the riot scenes. Like Shakespeare's contemporary food rioters, the mobs in Coriolanus do not rise up to subvert the established social order; they revolt in order to alert the authorities that their grievances must be heard and respected. By portraying the crowd as exceptionally well-organized, the playwright transforms the play into a social critique to encourage his audience to think about the potential danger of popular disruptions and to urge the authorities to contemplate the consequences of ignoring the popular voice. Through this critique, the dramatist also manages to display how hunger can turn into a formidably collective power that poses a serious threat to the ruling authorities.Item The Crime Scene of Revenge Tragedy(英語學系, 2012-03-??) Carol Mejia LaPerleAnalyzing the parallel gestures of ritualistic brutality deployed in the cannibal banquet of Seneca’s Thyestes and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, I reveal how the genre of revenge tragedies is simultaneously an instance of, and challenge to, Georges Bataille’s socio-economic theory of excess within a general economy. Excess, and not scarcity, is the motive and the condition for revenge. Both revengers react to a surplus of energy, or what I will call the “excess of possibilities,” that threatens autonomy. Thus, the victims of revenge embody the excess of possibilities in the plays since they are reminders of the contingency, and potential indistinguishability, of the agents of revenge. Sacrificial cannibalism emerges as the revenger’s means for autonomous differentiation, thus eliminating the unbearable interchangeability generated by surplus. Furthermore, by theorizing the excess of possibilities as the underlying pressure driving Atreus as a Senecan revenge figure, I argue that the citation of a specifically Senecan cannibal banquet, appropriated in Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, is a gesture by the author to sacrifice, and thus gratuitously consume, the surplus violence generated by the act of representation itself.