David Lodge's campus novels in Spanish translation: a comparative study of genre and intertextuality

This thesis explores the inter-related concepts of intertextuality and genre in translation, with special reference to how David Lodge's campus novels Changing Places [1975], Small World [1984], and Nice Work [1988] have been translated in Spain since 1977. This is done through a descriptive comparison of source texts and target texts, along two lines of investigation: generic intertextuality and specific intertextuality. In terms of generic intertextuality, Lodge's novels are linked to a line of texts that constitute the Anglo-American subgenre of "campus novels". In Lodge's novels this generic connection is sustained by his parodic depiction of academia and by the use of convention ali sed textual and narrative structures that elicit certain responses from readers and influence their interpretation of the novels. Specific intertextuality, on the other hand, is generated in his novels by way of specific references to the traditions and canonical texts of English literature. These references function as a source of meaning, and are designed to bring certain connotations to readers' minds, also shaping their perception of the novels. This intertextual framework, as well as cultural elements such as the parody and the university settings, raise particular problems for the Spanish translator, who is faced with literary and cultural referents that are unfamiliar to the average Spanish reader. The difficulty is only intensified by the fact that the campus novel has no similar counterpart in the Spanish literary system. Ultimately, in order to represent these cultural elements for the target reader, the translator must choose among a variety of translation strategies and case-by-case solutions. These decisions are necessarily also influenced by extra-textual factors such as translation "norms" and awareness of reader expectations. My case-study comparison and analysis of translators' behaviour as regards the generic and specific intertextual features of Lodge's novels leads to broad conclusions not only about the effect of certain translation choices on these features, on the overall character of the novels, and on their reception by target readers, but also on the reasons underlying translators' strategies and how far they may be said to respond to normative or other constraints

Hereditary Tradition: Analyzing Connections among Detective Depictions in Texts by Poe, Doyle, and King using Harold Bloom’s Revisionary Ratios Theory

There has been a longstanding debate about the origin of detective fiction, with most recognizing Poe as its pioneer. However, there remains a need to comprehensively analyze the literary influence that spans across generations in detective fiction. This research introduces a comprehensive analysis of the literary influence that spans across generations in detective fiction, shedding light on the intricate web of connections between Edgar Allan Poe, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Laurie R. King. Central to this investigation is the application of Harold Bloom’s theory of revisionary ratios, which serves as an invaluable analytical framework. Through the application of Harold Bloom’s theory of revisionary ratios, this research provides a comprehensive exploration of the enduring significance of intertextuality in shaping the detective fiction landscape. It underscores the intricate web of influences that connect Poe’s pioneering works with subsequent narratives by Conan Doyle and King. Having the enduring significance of intertextuality that shapes the detective fiction landscape, this study still offers a novel perspective on the genre’s dynamic evolution. The method involves a detailed review of revisionary ratio concepts and their implications for understanding complex literary works more thoroughly. The result reveals the enduring significance of revisionary ratios in understanding the complexities of literary works, with Edgar Allan Poe’s influence resonating in subsequent detective stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Laurie R. King

Non-linearity and/in Translation: On Complex Strategies in the Ukrainian Rendition of Joyce’s Novel-Hypertext “Ulysses”

[full article and abstract in English] By positing that translation is the main manifestation of “interliterarity” (in D. Ďurišin’s conceptualization) that brings to the fore the meta-creational capacities of the target literature, the present article attempts (1) to study a translatability potential of a hypertext as based on the Ukrainian translation of James Joyce’s novel-hypertext Ulysses, and (2) to justify the role of its reception in the Ukrainian literary field as a force for language and culture development. The synthesis of a “verbal music” with a mosaic of texts and narratives – imitated, playfully transformed or directly quoted – is claimed to be a key source of hypertextuality in Ulysses. In this line of reasoning, the paper particularly focuses on (1) the role of both overcoming cultural barriers and leaving a space for reader’s co-creativity while transferring of intertexts; (2) the approaches to interpretation of parody and pastiche as forms of writing-as-translation practice; (3) J. Wawrzycka’s concept regarding translation of musicalized fiction as trans-semantification, i. e. attending to literariness of the text; (4) the idea of translator’s visibility attributed to the Ukrainian re-languaging of musicalized fiction

Fixing meaning: intertextuality, inferencing and genre in interpretation

The intertextual theories of V. N. Voloshinov, Mikhail Bakhtin and the early Julia Kristeva provide the most convincing account of the processes of textual production, conceived as constitutively social, cultural and historical. However, the ways in which intertextual accounts of reading (or 'use') have extended such theories have foreclosed their potential. In much contemporary literary and cultural theory, it is assumed that reading, conceived intertextually, is no simple decoding process, but there is little interest in what interpretation, as a process, is, and its relations to reading. It is these questions which this thesis seeks to answer. The introduction sets the scene both for the problem and its methodological treatment: drawing certain post-structuralist and pragmatic theories of meaning into confrontation, and producing a critical synthesis. Part one (chapters one to three) elaborate these two traditions of meaning and stages the encounter. Chapter one offers detailed expositions of Voloshinov, Bakhtin and Kristeva, contrasting these with other intertextual theories of production and reception. Chapter two examines inferential accounts of communication within pragmatics, focusing on Paul Grice and on Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson's Relevance theory. Chapter three stages an encounter between these radically different traditions. A common ground is identified: both are rhetorical approaches to meaning, focusing on the relations between texts, contexts and their producers and interpreters. Each tradition is then subjected to the theoretical scrutiny of the other. Inferential theories expose the lack of specificity in intertextual accounts which completely ignore inferencing as a process. Intertextual theories reveal that text and context have semantically substantive intertextual dimensions, most particularly genre and register (conceived intertextually) which are ignored by inferential theories. Text and context are therefore far more semantically fixed than such theories suppose. Both traditions ignore the role of production practices other than 'speech' or 'writing', i.e. they ignore how publishing practices - editing, design, production and marketing - constitute genre and shape reading. In Part Two (chapters four to six), the critique is developed into an account of interpretation. Interpretation, conceived intertextually, is significantly, though not exclusively, inferential, but inferential processes do not 'work' in the ways proposed by existing inferential theories. Patterns of inference are ordered by the relations between discourses (in Foucault's sense) and genres in the text, the reader's knowledge and the conditions of reading. Chapter four elaborates the concepts required for such an account of interpretation, centring on the role of publishing processes and the text's material form in shaping interpretation. The limits of existing accounts of the edition and publishing, specifically Gerard Genette's Paratexts and work in the 'new' textual studies, call for a more expansive account of how publishing shapes genre and interpretation. Chapters five and six develop two case-studies which extend these concepts and arguments. These examine two contemporary publishing categories: 'classics' (Penguin, Everyman etc.) and literary theory textbooks (Introductions and Readers). Through the detailed analyses of particular editions, I develop and substantiate a stronger and richer account of interpretation as process and practice and its relation to reading. This is expanded in the final chapter

Genre as linguistic coding of social occasions and the translation of their textual/intertextual potential with reference to English and Arabic

The current research deals with the notion of genre and introduces the notion of genrelet as a special kind of genre which operates under structural and language constraints,, and which involves more specific textual, participatory and social roles of participants than a genre does. It is argued that there exists a highly motivated kind of genre via intertextuality where the language user hijacks some generic elements from one genre and infiltrates them *into another different genre in an attempt to achieve a subtle argument and to relay an attitude. This intertextual operation involves the three dimensions of context (register, pragmatics, semiotics) and entails changes inflicted on the original social occasion, the attitude of the original text producer, the position of the sign, the function of the original genre, and the textual, participatory and/or social roles of the original participants. The research attempts to handle the issue from an English/Arabic translation point of view since the intertextual operation is considered one of the most problematic cases a translator would face

Announcement-annotation texts: definition, correlation and synthesis

The paper deals with the problems of definition, correlation and synthesis of two text types: announcement and annotation. The main goal of this article is to postulate they have enough similar features to be combined in one text type. The examination of the relationship between different types of text is one of the most current research topics in the European linguistic literature, to which more and more studies draw the attention. However, the empirical research is still rarely carried out. In this paper, announcement and annotation have been examined on common and different features of both speech genres with a view to a correlation of these genres. After the synthesis of two text types, the authors determined their common traits which evidence these genres consistency. After all, the suggestion was made to integrate the definitions of announcement and annotation texts into one definition: announcement annotation texts (or annotexts). Although this postulate needs to be modified and supplemented in view of text types selected for analysis, it is a good starting point for further research

Creativity and Culture in Copyright Theory

Creativity is universally agreed to be a good that copyright law should seek to promote, yet copyright scholarship and policymaking have proceeded largely on the basis of assumptions about what it actually is. When asked to discuss the source of their inspiration, individual artists describe a process that is intrinsically ineffable. Rights theorists of all varieties have generally subscribed to this understanding, describing creativity in terms of an individual liberty whose form remains largely unspecified. Economic theorists of copyright work from the opposite end of the creative process, seeking to divine the optimal rules for promoting creativity by measuring its marketable byproducts. But these theorists offer no particular reason to think that marketable byproducts are either an appropriate proxy or an effective stimulus for creativity (as opposed to production), and more typically refuse to engage the question. The upshot is that the more we talk about creativity, the more it disappears from view. At the same time, the mainstream of intellectual property scholarship has persistently overlooked a broad array of social science methodologies that provide both descriptive tools for constructing ethnographies of creative processes and theoretical tools for modeling them

Epic Stories: Sequence Fiction, Young Readers, And The Aesthetics Of World Building

This study theorizes the world building processes that sequence fiction engages within a framework of intratextual structuralism and cognitive aesthetic stage theory. The study begins with an interdisciplinary overview of fictional and possible worlds theory before proposing a structural adaptation of this lens that explains the developmental, aesthetic benefits of the genre for young readers. Chapter II is an application of the adapted lens to a canonical epic, the His Dark Materials sequence by Philip Pullman. I interpret the intentional structure of the story world across novels to discuss how these engage readers at different aesthetic milestones and encourage a deeper imaginative construct as a result. Chapter III is a similar application of the proposed theory for the popular television story world: Nickelodeon’s animated epic, The Last Airbender by Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. The examination of this story world includes a discussion of how media and different forms of literacy disrupt and encourage specific aesthetic responses to a story world. The final chapter begins with an observational discussion of my two children and their experiences engaging with fictional worlds. My analysis of their responses to a popular sequence proposes the children have an intuitive reading process that revolves around play and multimodal engagement with fiction that enhances the internalization of a story world. The chapter concludes with a discussion of how similar methods in an adult classroom can benefit adult students that struggle with reading engagement

Generic Identity and Intertextuality

In his paper, Generic Identity and Intertextuality, Marko Juvan proposes that an anti-essentialist drive -- a characteristic of recent genology -- has led postmodern scholars to the conviction that genre is but a system of differences and that its matrix cannot be deduced from a particular set of apparently similar texts. Juvan argues that the concept of intertextuality may prove advantageous to explain genre identity in a different way: genres exist and function as far as they are embedded in social practices that frame intertextual and meta-textual links/references to prototypical texts or textual series. In Juvan\u27s view, genres are cognitive and pragmatic devices for intertextual pattern-matching and texts or textual sets become generic prototypes by virtue of intertextual and meta-textual interaction: on one side there is the working (influence) of semantic, syntactic, and pragmatic features of prototypical texts on their domestic and foreign literary offspring; on the other side we see meta-textual descriptions and intertextual derivations or references, which establish or revise retroactively the hard core of genre pattern. Any given text is, because of the generic and pragmatic component of the author\u27s communicative competence, dependent on existing genre patterns