On Rereading Homer’s Iliad in the Twenty-first Century

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President's letter

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Translation and postcolonialism

This paper will seek to trace two lines of post-colonial theorizing about translation, one of which can loosely be termed post-colonial literary theory and the other as translation studies. Both of these fields rose to prominence and developed in the latter decades of the twentieth century. It will be argued that research is currently moving towards an integration of the two approaches that offers exciting new possibilities for the future

Islands, Literature, and Cultural Translatability

This essay provides a historical overview of the island tradition in European literature and links it specifically to the notion of cultural translatability and the idea of the floating island as a floating signifier with a focus on canonical writers from Greco-Roman antiquity to the contemporary period, and finally using the example of the Caribbean to discuss islands in a post-colonial and global perspective.  Island spaces are used to explore and create bridges between the real and the imaginary as a response to cultural and social realities, frequently taking the form of utopias/dystopias, Edens, Arcadias, nations, metatexts, cultural crossroads.  The virtual spaces of islands are susceptible to translatability and articulate perspectives on the shifting relationship between self and other, center and periphery, serving as sites of mediation between cultures. Within an increasingly global culture marked by inequalities and differences, islands may induce a contrapuntal approach to literary and cultural criticism

Translation Studies versus Comparative Literature?

Comparative literature is one of the main disciplines out of which translation studies emerged, so it is hardly surprising if at times the relationship between the two subjects has been marked by antagonism. Comparative literary scholars, in particular – perennially anxious about the status of comparative literature itself – have argued that their discipline has been subsumed and superseded by translation studies. Yet in recent decades the two subject areas have also been growing further apart, to the extent that Susan Bassnett, one of the key exponents of the antagonistic view, has modified her stance and argued instead for a rapprochement between the two under the heading of intercultural studies