Culture and translation studies

The relevance of notions of ‘culture’ for any sustained discussion of translation has been amply confirmed in the entanglements that the two concepts have entered, repeatedly, in the intellectual environment of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century. Such entanglements have proved central to the rise of Translation Studies (TS) to its current disciplinary prominence, and have arguably been favoured by an element that discussions of ‘culture’ and ‘translation’ have long held in common: an ambitious conceptual scope, a tendency to extend (indefinitely, it sometimes seems) the terms’ semantic range. Such ambitions have a rich lineage, and have fostered key elements within our range of inquiry. Indeed, culture is construed in this entry as the way of life of a community considered, synchronically and/or diachronically, in the fullness of its material and non-material conditions. This includes the rapport between language and experience, and its impact on the delineation of distinctive mindsets, patterns of behaviour, intellectual achievements and material achievements. This very broad use of the concept of culture can be traced to arguments developed over the past century. The work of anthropologists (e.g. Ruth Benedict) in the period between the two world wars yielded the most influential definition of culture in our age, as ‘a whole way of life.’ Such contributions foreshadowed key developments in the disciplinary landscape of the late twentieth century that encompass the rise of ‘cultural studies’ (following the seminal work of authors like Raymond Williams), and the pervasive influence of those French thinkers of the 1960s and ‘70s (Barthes, Foucault, Kristeva) who enacted the transition from structuralism to poststructuralism. A key notion prompted by such developments is that, rather than residing in essence or inherence, meaning is relationally constituted – or (in Stuart Hall’s phrasing) it arises from a process of ‘articulation.' This entry delineates the intellectual consequences of such discourses on culture for the disciplinary fashioning of TS. The approaches covered range from polysystem theory to the ‘cultural turn’ and insights from postcolonial theory; and from thence to more recent developments such as the emphasis on ‘multimodality’ and arguments for the inception of ‘post-translation studies’

False Latin, Double Dutch: Foreign and Domestic in Love's Labour's Lost and The Shoemaker's Holiday

This paper offers a discussion of linguistic diversity as a source of laughter in two early modern English comedies, respectively by William Shakespeare and Thomas Dekker. It focuses especially on the close relationship between the risible potential of some verbal practices and the playwrights' dramatisation of tensions between a sense of the foreign and an assertive vernacular Englishness - at a moment in European cultural and political history that proved crucial for the emergence of commonplace perceptions of national identities. My reading of such tensions will benefit from insights provided by imagology, translation and comparative studies

The word mistrusted : rhetoric and self-irony in some modern irish poets

The bardic expectations instituted by long-standing stereotypes of 'the Irish poet' have persistently proved a source of unease for some post- Yeatsian Irish poets, generating different perspectives on the relationship between poet and audience-as well as on the power (?) of the poetic utterance. If with a poet like Paul Muldoon an avoidance of the bardic is at al1 times made evident (as part of the (self-)deflation entailed by the parodic strategies which have become a hallmark of his writing), in the case of several other poets evasion of the voice-asauthority may prove less obvious, and not devoid of contradictions. This paper will deal with different ways of representing the perplexities of the self as holder of poetic power, drawing mostly on poems by Thomas Kinsella, Derek Mahon and Seamus Heaney

On Paul Durcan and the visual arts: gender, genre, medium

A obra de Paul Durcan encontra uma das suas feições mais atraentes no modo como reconhece fronteiras e explora travessias. As linhas divisórias que a sua poesia cruza regularmente são de vários tipos: são semióticas e intermediais, quando Durcan interpela verbalmente representações noutros sistemas de significação - em particular nas artes visuais; são culturais e políticas, envolvendo o processamento poético de circunstâncias irlandesas ou globais; e questionam identidades de gênero, salientando as perplexidades de mulheres e homens como sujeitos e objetos de uma multiplicidade de inscrições. Este ensaio aborda a escrita (literalmente) transgressiva de Durcan e os desafios intelectuais e disciplinares que ela comporta, ao interrogar o modo como lemos poemas e imagens, mas também como aceitamos a auto-contenção de configurações políticas e identitárias.The poetry of Paul Durcan finds one of its major attractions in its acknowledgement and crossing of boundaries. Such borderlines are of various types: they are semiotic and intermedial, involving Paul Durcan's deployment of verbal resources to co-opt or challenge representations in other systems of signification - especially visual media; they are cultural and political, concerning the poet's processing of elements from both Irish and global cultures; and they are those proper to gendered identities, highlighting the positions of men and women as both subjects and objects of a variety of inscriptions. This essay approaches Durcan's (literally) transgressive writing and the intellectual and disciplinary challenges it poses by questioning our ability to read poems and pictures, and accept the ostensible selfcontainment of political conformations and modes of identity

Misogyny or Misanthropy : the doubtful case of Ben Jonhson´s Epicoene

As its title suggests, Ben Jonson´s comedy Epicoene, or The Silent Woman lays a crucial emphasis on women´s identity and behaviour. Women in this play are satirized both as voluble embodiments of falsehood or depravity and as the agents of a ´monstrous´ and incompetently pursued will to power. But male characters also conspicuously fail to take on a normative status - as they are found to be either ´unnatural´ hen-pecked husbands, impotent and cowardly fools, or sadistic and amoral (though triumphant) rogues. The design of mi-sogynous satire is thus diluted with a more universal indictment, or else with misanthropy´s benevolent counterpart - a shoulder-shrugging moral relativism which can be recognised as a hallmark of later Jonsonian comedy

Hamlet : a peça e o livro

It is the purpose of this article to reconsider the terms on which a centrally canonical play like Hamlet can be read today as a book, as a text to be encountered on the page for a reading experience that can hardly be unaware of Hamlet's place in the history of literature. The present study thus takes part in the tendency, manifest in a number of publications in recent years, to reassess the page / stage duality in Shakespeare studies – following and querying the critical hegemony enjoyed by stage-oriented criticism in the past few decades. Further, it argues on behalf of the insights to be derived from approaches to Shakespeare, such as those supported by textual scholarship, whose rescue from a reputation of arcaneness has in recent years been initiated, prompting a renewed sense of how intrinsic such approaches are to any critical design with a bearing on texts. As a parallel concern, the article highlights the divergent forms of attention which Shakespeare (and Hamlet) have obtained respectively inside and outside the academic world, focusing on the perplexities aroused by the highly various discourses thus generated, and discussing prominent aspects of their institutional and cultural histories

Cultura e estudos de tradução

A relevância de noções de “cultura’ para qualquer debate fundamentado sobre tradução foi amplamente confirmada pelos entrecruzamentos múltiplos destes dois conceitos no ambiente intelectual da transição do séc. XX para o XXI. Tais entrecruzamentos estiveram no cerne da ascensão dos chamados Estudos de Tradução à sua atual proeminência disciplinar, muito devendo a um elemento comum à “cultura” e à “tradução”, nos termos em que têm sido discutidos: um escopo conceptual ambicioso, uma tendência para expandir (indefinidamente, dir-se-ia por vezes) o respetivo alcance semântico. Tais ambições têm uma linhagem complexa, sendo também responsáveis por algumas componentes definidoras do próprio quadro de inquirição em que aqui nos situamos. Com efeito, no presente verbete entende-se “cultura” como consistindo na maneira de viver de uma comunidade considerada, sincrónica e diacronicamente, na plenitude das suas condições materiais e imateriais. Nelas se inclui a relação entre a linguagem e a experiência, bem como o seu impacto na delineação de quadros mentais específicos, de padrões de comportamento, de conseguimentos intelectuais e materiais. Esta utilização particularmente ampla do conceito de cultura radica em argumentos desenvolvidos ao longo do século que nos precede. Da obra de antropólogos (por exemplo, Ruth Benedict) no período entre as duas guerras mundiais proveio a mais influente definição de cultura do nosso tempo – “toda uma maneira de viver”. Tais contributos antecederam desenvolvimentos fundamentais para o panorama disciplinar dos saberes no séc. XX tardio, incluindo o emergir dos chamados “estudos culturais” (prosseguindo perspetivas abertas por autores como Raymond Williams) e a influência ubíqua daqueles pensadores franceses das décadas de 1960 e ’70 (Barthes, Foucault, Kristeva) que protagonizaram a transição do estruturalismo para o pós-estruturalismo. Uma noção crucial gerada por tais desenvolvimentos é a de que, em vez de serem de ordem essencial ou inerente, os significados constituem-se relacionalmente – ou (no dizer de Stuart Hall) emergem de um processo de “articulação.” Este verbete oferece uma delineação das consequências intelectuais de tais discursos sobre cultura para a conformação disciplinar dos Estudos de Tradução. As abordagens a considerar vão da teoria do polissistema à “viragem culturalista” e às perceções trazidas pela teoria pós-colonial; e destas até propostas mais recentes como sejam a ênfase em “multimodalidade” e argumentos em prol dos “estudos pós-tradução”

Fio e fantasma

Resenha de AMARAL, Ana Luísa. Próspero morreu. Poema em acto. Lisboa: Caminho, 2011