Ressenyes

Obra ressenyada: Mirella AGORNI, Translating Italy for the Eighteenth Century : British Women, Translation and Travel Writing (1739-1797). Manchester: St. Jerome, 2002

“Not writing a regular narrative”: Washington Irving’s Construction of Granada in British and Transatlantic Romantic-Period Literature

En sus obras dedicadas a Granada y la Alhambra, Washington Irving no se limitó a crear distorsiones entretenidas de hechos históricos en el contexto de una geografía remota y ornamentada de un agradable color local. De hecho, A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829) y The Alhambra (1832) muestran una compleja operación de producción de la geografía cultural granadina mediante una combinación de diferentes modelos epistémicos y de representación. Estas obras producen Granada y la Alhambra ubicándolas dentro de narraciones “irregulares” y visiblemente híbridas, así como en medio de distintas preocupaciones estéticas y procedimientos epistemológicosIn his works on Granada and the Alhambra, Washington Irving did not merely fashion entertaining distortions of historical facts set in a remote and pleasingly colourful geography. Instead, A Chronicle of the Conquest of Granada (1829) and The Alhambra (1832) set in train a complex operation of production of Granada’s cultural geography by combining different forms of knowledge and representation. These texts produce Granada and the Alhambra by locating them within conspicuously hybridized and “irregular” narratives at the nexus of multiple aesthetic concerns and forms of knowledg

La Chronicle of the Cid de Robert Shouthey: España como archivo textual y zona de intervención

Far from being a mere medievalizing work meant to provide light entertainment, Robert Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid (1808) was the first translation of a fundamental component of Europe’s revered epic heritage and a complex work of scholarship. Through a careful exploration of this often overlooked masterpiece, this essay demonstrates how the author organized it as a multilayered textual machine aimed at an intricate operation of cultural construction. To this end, the essay offers a detailed examination of the origins and compositional development of the Chronicle, an analysis of its translational mechanisms and an assessment of its contribution to a wide-ranging process of «cultural translation» of Spain and its civilization into nineteenth-century British culture. In this perspective, the Chronicle becomes visible as an instrument of intervention into Spain and Iberian culture, into Romantic-period scholarly discourse and practice, as well as into the ideological debate on the Peninsular War. Through his composite text, Southey pieced together a multifaceted vision of Spain that translated into a cosmic vision of Europe and the West, as well as of world history and civilization. Finally, the impact of this work on later poets, historians and intellectuals testifies to the long-lasting relevance of its narrative of Spain for the imagination of nineteenth-century Britain and the rest of the English-speaking world.Lejos de ser una mera narración amena de tema medievalizante, The Chronicle of the Cid de Robert Southey (1808) fue la primera traducción al inglés de una obra fundamental de la venerada tradición épica europea y un complejo trabajo de erudición. A través de una exploración atenta de esta obra maestra frecuentemente ignorada, el artículo se propone analizar su variada estructura de máquina textual orientada a una operación de construcción cultural. En él, por lo tanto, se ofrece un estudio detallado de los orígenes y de la composición de la Chronicle, de sus mecanismos traductivos y de su contribución al proceso de «traducción cultural» de España y de su civilización propio de la literatura británica del siglo xix. En esta perspectiva, la Chronicle of the Cid emerge como un instrumento de intervención en la cultura española (e ibérica más en general), en el discurso y en la práctica de la investigación erudita en la edad romántica, así como en el debate en torno a la Guerra de la Independencia. Entretejiendo diferentes niveles textuales, Southey compone una visión polifacética de España que se traduce en una visión de Europa y Occidente y, es más, del desarrollo histórico de la civilización en general. El impacto de la Chronicle y de su construcción cultural sobre los poetas, historiadores e intelectuales de las generaciones sucesivas confirma la relevancia perdurable de su traducción de España para el imaginario de Gran Bretaña y de las demás culturas de habla inglesa a lo largo del siglo XIX

Translation and Cultural Appropriation : Dante, Paolo and Francesca in British Romanticism

This contribution begins from a reconsideration of the concept of appropriation as a mechanism interlinking the consumption and production of cultural material. On this basis, the English translations of Dante's Divina Commedia produced in the Romantic period will be seen as part of a larger cultural project for the incorporation of major authors, texts and literary/artistic traditions in order to expand and aggrandize English or British national culture. Henry Cary's complete translation of 1814 is then placed in the context of the competing discourses and the different «synecdochic» reductions of the Italian poet created by Romantic appropriative exchanges. A particularly significant instance of this kind of appropriation is offered by versions of the «Paolo and Francesca» episode (Inferno V.73-143). Translations and rewritings of this episode by Leigh Hunt, John Keats and Lord Byron, together with Cary's canonical version, testify to a proliferation of meanings, ranging from the political and the public to the private and intimate sphere. Approached in terms of appropriation, Dante's text becomes visible as the producer of cultural intimations that turn it into an active and influential element in the target culture, one further agent in its multiple processes of production and re-production.Aquesta contribució s'obre amb una reconsideració del concepte d'apropiació com a mecanisme d'enllaç entre el consum i la producció de materials culturals. Sobre aquesta base, les traduccions angleses de la Divina Comèdia de Dante fetes en el període romàntic hi són enteses com a part d'un projecte cultural més ampli, que busca la incorporació d'autors, textos i tradicions literàries/artístiques a fi d'expandir i engrandir la cultura nacional anglesa o britànica. La traducció completa de Henry Cary (1814) és vista així en el context dels discursos en competència i les diverses reduccions «sinecdòquiques» del poeta italià originats pels intercanvis apropiatius romàntics. Un exemple particularment significatiu d'aquesta mena d'apropiació l'ofereixen les versions de l'episodi de «Paolo i Francesca» (Inferno V.73-143). Les traduccions i reescriptures d'aquest episodi per Leigh Hunt, John Keats i Lord Byron, així com la versió canònica de Cary, són testimonis d'una proliferació de significacions que van de l'esfera política i pública a l'íntima i privada. Considerat en termes d'apropiació, el text de Dante s'erigeix en productor d'implicacions culturals que el converteixen en un element actiu i influent en la cultura d'arribada, un agent més en els seus múltiples processos de producció i re-producció

The International “Commerce of Genius”: Foreign Books in Romantic-Period London

This essay addresses the question of the presence and availability of foreign books in London between the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. After considering the difficulties related to obtaining foreign volumes from pri­vate libraries, such as that of Holland House, it turns to examine the role played by periodicals in reviewing foreign titles and advertising the lists and catalogues of those booksellers who stocked and sold foreign works. Focusing on some of the most successful among them (such as Boosey, Treuttel and Wurtz, Deboffe and Dulau), the essay sketches out a map of their businesses in London, the languages they covered, their different groups of customers, as well as the commercial and political risks to which they were exposed. As this preliminary investigation makes clear, this multifaceted phenomenon has not yet been the object of detailed explorations and reconstructions. Accordingly, this essay traces the outline of, and ad­vocates, a comprehensive study of the history of the trade in foreign pub­lications in London and Britain at the turn of the nineteenth century. By filling a major gap in our knowledge of the history of the book, this recon­struction may also offer invaluable new insights into the international co­ordinates of the literary field in the Romantic era, and particularly in the years after Waterloo, when the cross-currents of an international "com­merce of genius" (as the Literary Gazette called it in 1817) became an in­trinsic feature of an increasingly cosmopolitan cultural milieu

Ressenyes

Obra ressenyada: Gonzalo FERNÁNDEZ PARILLA; Manuel C. FERIA GARCÍA (coord.), Orientalismo, exotismo y traducción. Cuenca: Ediciones de la Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, 2000

Parola, corpo, potere: esercizi di lettura dal Julius Caesar di Shakespeare a Death and the Maiden di Ariel Dorfman

This essay explores figurations of the body as the focus of operations of writing aimed at staging effects of power “in action”. To this end, it concentrates on significant (though chronologically and culturally distant) works such as Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and Ariel Dorfman’s La muerte y la doncella (Death and the Maiden) in order to highlight a range of relevant formal features, semiotic traits, ideological configurations and affective structures. These categories delineate a rhetorical practice in which verbal representations of the body result in an ostension of power as a nexus of gesture and voice, action and speech. In particular, the body functions as a conflict zone, since the two works under examination posit it as a locus of confrontation between effects of power such as coercion and resistance, the concealment and revelation of truth, or masculinity and femininity. Accordingly, these texts offer exemplary instances of how writing the body constitutes an affectively charged performance of the physical as the meeting point of verbal effects and a nucleus of ideological and political agency – a body, in other words, that is both the subject of history and the object of multiple rhetorical operations and negotiations.Il saggio prende in esame il corpo come luogo di operazioni di scrittura tese a mettere in scena effetti di potere “in atto”. Attraverso esplorazioni testuali di opere significative, sebbene lontane nel tempo e appartenenti a sistemi linguistico-culturali distanti, come il Julius Caesar di Shakespeare e La muerte y la doncella (Death and the Maiden) di Ariel Dorfman, si intendono segnalare aspetti formali, modalità semiotiche, configurazioni ideologiche e strutture affettive proprie di una prassi retorica in cui la rappresentazione del corpo, tramite il linguaggio inteso come proiezione della fisicità, corrisponde a un’ostensione del potere come nesso di gesto e voce, azione e discorso – e soprattutto come zona di conflitto. Nelle due opere in questione la parola diventa visibile come meccanismo di esplicitazione di una fisicità che è zona di scontro e confronto tra effetti di potere quali la coercizione e la resistenza, tra occultamento e svelamento della verità, tra identità maschile e femminile. Alla luce di queste prove testuali, la scrittura del corpo si profila come una performance, densa di “intensità affettive”, dello stesso corpo in quanto punto di incrocio di effetti di parola e nucleo di atti ideologici e politici – un corpo, insomma, che è sia soggetto della storia, sia oggetto di molteplici operazioni e negoziazioni retoriche

Robert Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid: Spain as a Textual Archive and an Intervention Zone

Far from being a mere medievalizing work meant to provide light entertainment,Robert Southey’s Chronicle of the Cid (1808) was the first translation of a fundamental component of Europe’s revered epic heritage and a complex work of scholarship. Through a careful exploration of this often overlooked masterpiece, this essay demonstrates how the author organized it as a multilayered textual machine aimed at an intricate operation of cultural construction. To this end, the essay offers a detailed examination of theorigins and compositional development of the Chronicle, an analysis of its translational mechanisms and an assessment of its contribution to a wide-ranging process of «cultural translation» of Spain and its civilization into nineteenth-century British culture. In this perspective, the Chronicle becomes visible as an instrument of intervention into Spain and Iberian culture, into Romantic-period scholarly discourse and practice, as well as into the ideological debate on the Peninsular War. Through his composite text, Southey pieced together a multifaceted vision of Spain that translated into a cosmic vision of Europe and the West, as well as of world history and civilization. Finally, the impact of this work on later poets, historians and intellectuals testifies to the long-lasting relevance of its narrative of Spain for the imagination of nineteenth-century Britain and the rest of the English-speaking world.Lejos de ser una mera narración amena de tema medievalizante, The Chronicle of the Cid de Robert Southey (1808) fue la primera traducción al inglés de una obra fundamental de la venerada tradición épica europea y un complejo trabajo de erudición. A través de una exploración atenta de esta obra maestra frecuentemente ignorada, el artículo se propone analizar su variada estructura de máquina textual orientada a una operación de construcción cultural. En él, por lo tanto, se ofrece un estudio detallado de los orígenes y de la composición de la Chronicle, de sus mecanismos traductivos y de su contribución al proceso de «traducción cultural» de España y de su civilización propio de la literatura británica del siglo XIX. En esta perspectiva, la Chronicle of the Cid emerge como un instrumento de intervención en la cultura española (e ibérica más en general), en el discurso y en la práctica de la investigación erudita en la edad romántica, así como en el debate en torno a la Guerra de la Independencia. Entretejiendo diferentes niveles textuales, Southey compone una visión polifacética de España que se traduce en una visión de Europa y Occidente y, es más, del desarrollo histórico de la civilización en general. El impacto de la Chronicle y de su construcción cultural sobre los poetas, historiadores e intelectuales de las generaciones sucesivas confirma la relevancia perdurable de su traducción de España para el imaginario de Gran Bretaña y de las demás culturas de habla inglesa a lo largo del siglo XIX