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Translating Early Medieval Poetry

Transformation, Reception, Interpretation

The first decades of the twenty-first century have seen an unprecedented level of creative engagement with early medieval literature, ranging from the long-awaited publication of Tolkien’s version of Beowulf to the adaptation of Eddic and Skaldic poetry for the screen. This collection brings together scholars and accomplished translators working with Old English, Old Norse and Medieval Irish poetry, to take stock of this extraordinary proliferation of translation activity and to suggest new ways in which to approach these dynamic literary traditions.

And the Shark, He Has Teeth

A Theater Producer’s Notes

First English translation of the memoirs of the great German-Jewish theater producer Ernst Josef Aufricht, providing an inside account of the late Weimar theater scene in Berlin. The title alludes to Brecht and Weill’s Threepenny Opera, the premiere of which was produced by Aufricht at his Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin in 1928, launching Brecht and Weill to worldwide fame.

Rethinking Medieval Translation

Ethics, Politics, Theory

Medieval notions of translatio raise issues that have since been debated in contemporary translation studies concerning the translator’s role as interpreter or author; the ability of translation to reinforce or unsettle linguistic or political dominance; and translation’s capacity for establishing cultural contact, or participating in cultural appropriation or effacement. This collection puts these ethical and political issues centre stage, asking whether questions currently being posed by theorists of translation need rethinking or revising when brought into dialogue with medieval examples.

The Blue Stain

A Novel of a Racial Outcast

Hugo Bettauer’s The Blue Stain, a novel of racial mixing and “passing,” starts and ends in Georgia but also takes the reader to Vienna and New York. First published in 1922, the novel tells the story of Carletto, son of a white European academic and an African American daughter of former slaves, who, having passed as white in Europe and fled to America after losing his fortune, resists being seen as “black” before ultimately accepting that identity and joining the early movement for civil rights. Never before translated into English, this is the first novel in which a German-speaking European author addresses early twentieth-century racial politics in the United States – not only in the South but also in the North.

Ngũgĩ

Reflections on his Life of Writing

First-hand accounts of how Ngugi’s life and work have intersected, and the multiple forces that have converged to make him one of the greatest writers to come out of Africa in the twentieth century. Drawing from a wide range of contributors, including writers, critics, publishers and activists, the volume traces the emergence of Ngugi as a novelist in the early 1960s, his contribution to the African culture of letters at its moment of inception, and his global artistic life in the twenty-first century.

New Poems

Rainer Maria Rilke

Rainer Maria Rilke, the most famous (and important) German language poet of the twentieth century – a master to be ranked with Goethe and Heine – wrote the New Poems of 1907 and 1908 in transition from his late-nineteenth-century style. They mark his appearance as a lyrical, metaphysical poet of the modernist sensibility, often using traditional forms like the sonnet to explore the inner essence, the deep heart, of things – often, quite literally, things.

Witness between Languages

The Translation of Holocaust Testimonies in Context

A growing body of scholarship is making visible the contribution of translators to the creation, preservation, and transmission of knowledge about the Holocaust. The discussion has tended to be theoretical or to concentrate on exposing the “distorted” translations of texts by important witnesses such as Anne Frank or Elie Wiesel. Peter Davies’s study shows how making translation and its effects visible contributes to a clearer understanding of how knowledge about the Holocaust has been and continues to be created and mediated.

Medieval Translations and Cultural Discourse

The Movement of Texts in England, France and Scandinavia

Throughout the Middle Ages, many Francophone texts – chansons de geste, medieval romance, works by Chrétien de Troyes and Marie de France – were widely translated in north-western Europe. In the process, these texts were frequently transformed to reflect the new cultures in which they appeared. Rikhardsdottir offers an examination of what the translation of medieval French texts into different European languages can reveal about the differences between cultures, cultural identity both in and through time.

Voices of Ghana

Literary Contributions to the Ghana Broadcasting System, 1955-57 (Second Edition)

This annotated and scholarly edition of the original landmark anthology, Voices of Ghana, contains poetry, plays, stories and essays first broadcast on radio in the years leading up to Ghana’s independence. The context of Ghana’s independence, the singularity of the anthology’s history, and the significance of many of the writers all contribute to the importance of this text. This second edition is a timely intervention into recent debates within postcolonial studies and world literature on the importance of broadcast culture in the dissemination of “new literatures” from the colonial world.

Translators and their Prologues in Medieval England

The first Middle English writer to discuss his methods of translating French into English, Layamon voices ideas about the creation of a new English tradition by translation that proved very durable. This book considers the practice of translation from French into English in medieval England, and how the translators themselves viewed their task. At its core is a corpus of French to English translations containing translator’s prologues written between c.1189 and c.1450