ANGLES Volume VI
Literary Translation: World Literature or 'Worlding' Literature
Edited by Ida Klitgård
List of Contents
Ástráður Eysteinsson (See abstract)
Notes on World Literature and Translation
Helen Cathleen Tarp (See abstract)
1495 to 1556: Flores Times Four
Padma Rangarajan (See abstract)
Writing 'Hindoostanee': False Translations and The Curse of Kehnma
Peter Mortensen (See abstract)
'Forstand og hjerte', or: How Danes Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Jane Austen
Fritz Senn (See abstract)
Dynamic Changes: Ulysses in Practice
Ida Klitgård (See abstract)
The Danish Translation of 'Penelope' in James Joyce's Ulysses
Charles Lock (See abstract)
Heterographics: Towards a History and Theory of Other Lettering
Christina Gullin (See abstract)
Translation and Acculturation: Reflections on Nadine Gordirner's Reputation in Sweden
Penny Johnson (See abstract)
'Capturing the Spirit': Reviewing Literary Translation
Book Reviews
Julia Briggs: Viggo Hjørnager Pedersen,
Ugly Ducklings? Studies in the English Translations
of Hans Christian Andersen's Tales and Stories
Michelle Keown: Eva Rask Knudsen,
The Circle and The Spiral: A Study of Australian Aboriginal
nnd New Zealand Maori Literature
Notes on Contributors
Editor's Preface
This collection discusses the intriguing interrelatedness between the concepts
and phenomena of world literature and translation. The term 'worlding',
presented by Ástráður Eysteinsson in this collection, is coined by Sarah
Lawall in her book Reading World Literature (1994) where it denotes the
reader's pleasurable 'reading' of the meeting of 'worlds' in a literary
translation - i.e. the meeting of the different cultural environments embodied
in a translation from one language into another. Through such reading, the
reader in fact participates in creating true 'world literature'.
This is a somewhat unorthodox conception of world literature,
conventionally defined as 'great literature' shelved in a majestic, canonical
library. In the opening article sparking off the theme of this collection,
Eysteinsson asks:
Which text does the concept of world literature refer to? It can hardly allude
exclusively to the original, which the majority of the work's readers may never
get to know. On the other hand, it hardly refers to the various translations as
seen apart from the original. It seems to have a crucial bearing on the border
between the two, and on the very idea that the work merits the move across
this linguistic and cultural border, to reside in more than one language.
Picking up on this question, all the essays in this collection throw light on
the problematic mechanics of cultural encounters when 'reading the world'
in literary translation, that is in the texts themselves as well as in the ways in
which they have become institutionalised as 'world literature'.
Ida Klitgård