Sacrifice and Sacred Violence
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Book Series
Studies on Philosophy, Intellectual History, Arts, Sciences, vol. 3
Metamorphoses
Tracing the Translator in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1660–1830
Brecht de Groote, Lieve Jooken, Sonja Lavaert, Guy Rooryck (eds)
- Pages: approx. 252 p.
- Size:178 x 254 mm
- Illustrations:1 b/w, 10 col., 2 tables b/w.
- Language(s):English, French
- Publication Year:2025
- € 85,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-60749-8
- Hardback
- Forthcoming (Jul/25)
- € 85,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-60750-4
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- Forthcoming
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This collection of case studies reconsiders the cultural (in)visibility of translators in the long eighteenth century, and offers methods to study its evolution and to retrace their presence.
Subject(s)
BIO
Brecht de Groote is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Translation, Interpretation, and Communication of the University of Ghent. His research focuses on the ways in which Romantic-period British culture is shaped by practices and ideas of translation and mediation.
Lieve Jooken is an Associate Professor in the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication of Ghent University. Her research focuses on the translation and cultural transfer of French and British philosophical discourse in the eighteenth century, considering processes of acculturation, the role of paratexts and the discursive voice of the translator in disseminating ideas.
Sonja Lavaert (VUB) is an Associate Professor in the Departments of Philosophy and Languages & Translation at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her research focuses on modern political philosophy, contemporary radical philosophy, critical theory, philosophy of art, and history of ideas and translation.
Guy Rooryck (UGent) is an Emeritus Professor of French, and was previously head of the French section (1993-2019) at the Department of Translation, Interpreting and Communication. He taught courses in French cultural history, area studies, literature and translation. He publishes on French literature, philosophy and translation.
Summary
Translators are crucial to the constitution, dissemination, and adaptation of literatures, cultures, and ideas. However, their presence in the historical record often proves difficult to recognise or retrace. This volume places front and centre this key problem for historians of translation, as well as for historians of literature, culture, and ideas. It sheds new light on the much-debated (in)visibility of historical translators by investigating in what contexts and through what strategies translators sought to render themselves either (in)visible, and how critics and scholars can now trace these efforts. When and how does the visible metamorphose into the invisible, and vice versa?
The volume focuses on the long eighteenth century, a period which witnesses a metamorphosis in literature and culture that tells powerfully on translators. From relatively visible cultural actors, they are reduced to enforced invisibility as cultural products stabilised their meanings around singular authors. Tracing this shift across a swathe of products and practices, the book conducts its investigations across a range of genres, ranging from radical politics over philosophy to opera; taking in languages and cultures across Western Europe.
Chapters employ case studies to develop methodological and theoretical models that will empower scholars of translation history to recover translators, both from the direct evidence of their work and from the networks and tools that supported them.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Brecht De Groote & Lieve Jooken, Introduction. Modelling A Long History of Translation
Yen-Mai Tran-Gervat, Don Quichotte en ses métamorphoses. Sur les traces des traducteurs anglais et français du « long dix-huitième siècle »
Raphaël Ingelbien, Framing Voltaire. English Translations of French Shakespeare Criticism and the Emergence of a National Aesthetics in the Eighteenth Century
Merel Weyaert, ‘Provided With Remarks and Corrections’. The Translator in Their Annotations in the Late Eighteenth-Century Dutch Republic
Livio Marcalemi, ‘If my Translation Sounds Here and There Quite Un-German…’. The Translator’s Visibility in Opera Libretti at the German-Speaking Courts around ı7oo
David Gibbons, Translating Travel in Post-Restoration Milan. Chateaubriand’s Itinerario da Parigi a Gerusalemme
Patrick Leech, Translation and Methodological Nationalism. Tracing Translators in Late Eighteenth-Century Radicalism
Erica J. Mannucci & Rosa Mucignat, The Many Lives of Fénelon. Transformations of a Revolutionary Play in France and Italy
Patrick Leech, Translation and Methodological Nationalism. Tracing Translators in Late Eighteenth-Centoury Radicalism
Sylvie-Kleiman-Lafon, The Translator’s Notes. Antoine Lasalle’s Interventions in his Translation of Francis Bacon’s Complete Works (ı799–ı8o3)
Luisa Simonuti, The Philosophical Cabinet of an Unexpected Translator. John Locke
Thomas Van Binsbergen, Inside the ‘Babel of Naturalism’. Spinoza’s Tractatus Theologico-Politicus in Translation
Bibliography
Index of Names
