Literature in Context 2. Lecture 10 Postcolonial Studies Literatures in English Literary...

Literature in Context2

Lecture 10

Postcolonial Studies Literatures in English

Literary Translation

Postcolonial StudiesSee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postcolonialism

Post-colonialism (postcolonial theory, post-colonial theory) is an intellectual discourse that consists ofreactions to, and analysis of, the cultural legacy ofcolonialis.

Postcolonialism comprises a set of theories foundamongst anthropology, architecture, philosophy,film, political science, human geography, sociology,feminism, religious and theological studies, andliterature.


The ultimate goal of post-colonialism is accounting forand combating the residual effects of colonialism oncultures.

It is not simply concerned with salvaging pastworlds, but learning how the world can move beyondthis period together, towards a place of mutual respect.


Post-colonialist theorists recognize that many of theassumptions which underlie the "logic" of colonialismare still active forces today.

Exposing and deconstructing the racist, imperialistnature of these assumptions will remove their power ofpersuasion and coercion.


A key goal of post-colonial theorists is clearingspace for multiple voices. This is especially true ofthose voices that have been previously silenced bydominant ideologies – subalterns.

Edward Said, in his book Orientalism, provides a clearpicture of the ways social scientists, specificallyOrientalists, can disregard the views of those theyactually study – preferring instead to rely on theintellectual superiority of themselves and their peers.


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 theory provides a framework thatdestabilizes dominant discourses in the West,challenges inherent assumptions, and critiquesthe legacies of colonialism.


Postcolonialism deals with cultural identity incolonized societies: the dilemmas of developing anational 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.


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, 1886

Map of the British Empire, 1922

RUDYARD KIPLING(1865-1936)

George Orwell called Kipling a "prophet of British imperialism".

He had the reputation as the ‘Poet of the Empire’.

The poem concerns the signing of the Ulster Covenant in 1912.

The Ulster Covenant was signed by just under half a million men and women from Ulster, on and before 28 September 1912, in protest against the Third Home Rule Bill, introduced by the British Government in that same year. The signatories were all against the establishment of a Home Rule parliament in Dublin.

ULSTER1912

The dark eleventh hour

Draws on and sees us sold

To every evil power

We fought against of old.

Rebellion, rapine hate

Oppression, wrong and greed

Are loosed to rule our fate,

By England's act and deed.

The blood our fathers spilt,

Our love, our toils, our pains,

Are counted us for guilt,

And only bind our chains.

Before an Empire's eyes

The traitor claims his price.

What need of further lies?

We are the sacrifice.

ULSTER1912

We asked no more than leave

To reap where we had sown,

Through good and ill to cleave

To our own flag and throne.

Now England's shot and steel

Beneath that flag must show

How loyal hearts should kneel

To England's oldest foe.

Ulster1912

The residents of Ulster, the northernmost province of Ireland, desired to keep their province part of the United Kingdom. By the late 19th century "Home Rule" was the idea de rigueur – it would give the Irish a devolved Parliament in Dublin to devise legislation for their own affairs, but they would be part of the British Empire. There were critics of this plan who felt that Home Rule was too close to an independent Ireland. Furthermore, as mostly Protestant, they feared the dominance of the rural, catholic South of Ireland over the northern part.

Thomas Osborne Davis(1814–1845)

was a revolutionary Irish writer who was the chief organiser and poet of the Young Ireland movement.

A NATION ONCE AGAIN

When boyhood's fire was in my bloodI read of ancient freemen,For Greece and Rome who bravely stood,Three hundred men and three men;And then I prayed I yet might seeOur fetters rent in twain,And Ireland, long a province, be.A Nation once again!

A Nation once again,A Nation once again,And lreland, long a province, beA Nation once again!

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

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 thecultural 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 more 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 StudiesSee: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Translation_studies

Translation studies is an interdiscipline containingelements of social science and the humanities, dealingwith the systematic study of the theory, the descriptionand the application of translation, interpreting or boththese activities.

Translation studies can be normative (prescribing rules

for the application of these activities) or descriptive.


As an interdisciplinary discipline, translation studiesborrows much from the different fields of study thatsupport translation.

These include comparative literature, computerscience, history, linguistics, philology, philosophy,semiotics, terminology, and so forth.

Note that occasionally in English writers will use theterm 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 inone context into a different one

The process involves reshaping and rewriting the text

Negotiation between the original, the source and itsdestination, the target


CULTURAL TRANSLATION is a new area of interest inthe field of translation studies.

Cultural translation is a concept used in culturalstudies to denote the process of transformation,linguistic or otherwise, in a given culture.

The concept uses linguistic translation as a tool ormetaphor in analysing the nature of transformation incultures. For example, ethnography is considered atranslated 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 adifferent set of readers with different expectations,aesthetic concepts, embedded in different culturalContext.

The translator has to take into account not only thelinguistic dimensions but the problem of diverse layersof 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’sIliad (1715-1720)

Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful springOf woes unnumber’d, heavenly goddess, sing!That wrath which hurl’d to Pluto’s gloomy reignThe 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 frompostcolonial perspective

Translators need to become more visibleTranslation 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 intertextual allusion to King Priam's request to Achilles forthe release of the dead body of his son Hector killed inBattle during the Trojan Wars. (The Iliad, Book XXIV).

Longley's sonnet was published in 1994, the yearwhich saw important Republican and Loyalist paramilitary ceasefires in the Ulster Troubles in NorhernIreland.

Michael Longley: Ceasefire

Ceasefire has often been read in the context of politicalevents in Ireland known as 'The Peace Process'.

Longley has translated this part of Homer’s epic poeminto the 14 line English sonnet form.

Michael Longley

Michael Longley: CeasefireI Put in mind of his own father and moved to tearsAchilles took him by the hand and pushed the old kingGently away, but Priam curled up at his feet andWept with him until their sadness filled the building.

II Taking Hector’s corpse into his own hands AchillesMade 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 bothTo stare at each other’s beauty as lovers might, Achilles built like a god, Priam good-looking stillAnd full of conversation, who earlier had sighed:

IV ‘I get down on my knees and do what must be doneAnd kiss Achilles’ hand, the killer of my son.’

Homer: Iliad, Book XXIVJohn 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!”

[…]


“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 daredTo pass our outworks, or elude the guard. […]”


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 steepMy careful temples in the dew of sleep:For, since the day that number’d with the deadMy hapless son, the dust has been my bed;


Then call the handmaids, with assistant toilTo wash the body and anoint with oil,Apart from Priam: lest the unhappy sire,Provoked to passion, once more rouse to ireThe 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 & Seamus Heaney portraits by

Colin Davidson & Edward McGuire


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

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