Translation, Subjectivity, and Culture in France and England, 1600-1800
Julie Candler Hayes
Translation, Subjectivity, and Culture examines the evolution of neoclassical translation theory from its origins among the first generation of French Academicians to its subsequent importation to England by royalist exiles, its development under the influence of such translator-critics as John Dryden and Anne Dacier, and its evolution in response to the philosophical and political ideas of the Enlightenment. Hayes shows how translators working from a range of literary, political, and philosophical viewpoints speak to such issues as the relationship of past to present, authorship and the status of women writers, the role of language in national identity, and Anglo-French intellectual exchange. Responding to recent translation historians who describe neoclassical translation as ethnocentric, she uncovers within these translators' projects not only openness to cultural others but constant and multiple reformulations of the very concept of otherness. Her book is a sustained reflection on the aims and methods of contemporary translation studies and the most complete account available of the role of translation during a critical period in European history.
The French originals of many of the sources cited in Translation, Subjectivity, and Culture can be found in "French Translators, 1600-1800: An Online Anthology of Prefaces and Criticism," ed. Julie Candler Hayes. To access this resource please visit http://scholarworks.umass.edu/french_translators/.
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About Julie Candler Hayes
Reviews for Translation, Subjectivity, and Culture in France and England, 1600-1800
Deidre Lynch
University of Toronto
"Translation, Subjectivity, and Culture offers a new and exhaustive approach to the theoretical models that have shaped our understanding of translation and literature. The book is a remarkable achievement that will become an important reference for the study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century translation theory."
Marie-Hélène Huet
Princeton University
"Hayes concludes, 'the work of translation takes place on an infinite number of other levels as well. It is the richness and variety of that discursive field that we should seek to recover.' Theoretically informed and convincingly historicized, Translation, Subjectivity, and Culture in France and England, 1600-1800 points the way to this recovery."
Gillian Dow
Translation and Literature
"This study of two centuries of neoclassical translation in France and England contributes significantly to both translation and literary history . . . [T]he book is a signal accomplishment in the field of early-modern translation studies."
Mary Helen McMurran
The Scriblerian