Translating Central American Life Writing for The
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Translating Central American Life Writing for the Anglophone Market: A Socio- Narrative Study of Women’s Agency and Political Radicalism in the Original and Translated Works of Claribel Alegría, Gioconda Belli and Rigoberta Menchú A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Humanities 2017 Tamara de Inés Antón School of Arts, Languages and Cultures Table of Contents List of Figures…………………………………………………………………………… 6 List of Tables……………………………………………………………………………. 8 Abstract………………………………………………………………………………… 11 Declaration……………………………………………………………………………... 12 Statement……………………………………………………………………………….. 12 Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………………… 13 Chapter 1: Introduction…………………………………………………………………. 14 1.1.Introduction………………………………………………………………… 14 1.2.Central American Literature, World Literature and the Anglophone World……………………………………………………………………….. 21 1.3.Research Questions………………………………………………………….26 1.4.Outline of Chapters…………………………………………………………. 28 Chapter 2: Central American Women within the World of Letters. Assessing the Core- Periphery System……………………………………………………………………….. 31 2.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………... 31 2.2. The World of Letters………………………………………………………. 32 2.3. The World System of Translation: A Core-Periphery Model……………… 34 2.4. Reconstructing the Core-Periphery Model: Central American Women Writers and their Layers of Peripheralisation…………………………………………… 44 2.4.1. Translation as the First Layer of Peripheralisation………………. 47 2.4.2. Latin American Literature as the Second Layer of Peripheralisation………………………………………………………... 48 2.4.3. Latin American Women Writers as the Third Layer of Peripheralisation………………………………………………………... 52 2.4.4. Central American Revolutionary Writing as the Fourth Layer of Peripheralisation………………………………………………………... 54 2.5.Accessing the Centre: Translation as Consecration………………………….57 2.6.Questioning Canonisation: Peripheralisation-Canonisation as Mirroring Practices within the Core-Periphery Model………………………………... 59 Chapter 3: Methodology and Corpus Rationale. The Interplay between Personal and Public Narratives in Women’s Life Writing……………………………………………………63 3.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………... 63 2 3.2. Narrative Theory as Framework of Analysis……………………………… 64 3.3. Review of the Proposed Data Set………………………………………….. 67 3.4. Core-Features of Narrativity……………………………………………….. 84 3.4.1. Selective Appropriation………………………………………….. 85 3.4.2. Causal Emplotment……………………………………………..... 87 3.4.3. Relationality……………………………………………………… 89 3.4.4. Genericness………………………………………………………. 94 3.5. Translation and the Framing of Narratives………………………………… 96 3.5.1. Paratextual Framing……………………………………………… 97 3.5.2. Textual Framing…………………………………………………. 99 Chapter 4: Location and the Canonisation of Life Writing …………………………… 101 4.1. Introduction ………………………………………………………………. 101 4.2. Location of Claribel Alegría’s No me agarran viva (1983) within the World of Letters……..........................................................................................................103 4.3. Causal Emplotment in the Public Narratives of Political Radicalism ……. 111 4.4. The Role of Women in the Armed Struggle: The Woman Warrior………. 124 4.5. The Interplay between Public Military Narratives and Personal Romantic Ones…………………………………………………………………………… 130 4.6. The Female Body…………………………………………………………. 137 4.7. Location of Gioconda Belli’s El país bajo mi piel (2002) within the World of Letters…………………………………………………………………………. 141 4.8. Belli’s Personal Narratives of Female Subjectivity, Body, Sexuality and Their Resonance with Public Feminist Narratives…………………………………… 147 4.9. Motherhood………………………………………………………………. 156 4.10. Labelling and the Narration of the Sandinista Revolution……………… 162 4.11. Causal Emplotment and the Reorganisation of Chapters………………... 166 4.12. Conclusion………………………………………………………………. 169 Chapter 5: Genre Conventions and the Canonisation of Life Writing………………... 172 5.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………. 172 5.2. Life Writing as a Genre and as a Critical Practice……………………….. 174 5.3. Feminist Approaches to Women’s Life Writing…………………………. 176 5.4. Proposed Data Set and the Subgenres of Life Writing…………………… 179 5.5. Gioconda Belli’s La mujer habitada (1989) as a Fictionalised Testimonio………………………………………………………………………...191 3 5.6. Fictionalising Belli’s Personal Narratives of Female Subjectivity……….. 201 5.7. Female Body and the Erotic ……………………………………………… 210 5.8. Motherhood………………………………………………………………. 216 5.9. Selective Appropriation and the Feminine Question in the Public Narratives of the Sandinista Revolution…………………………………………………….. 218 5.10. Blurring Literary Genres with Claribel Alegría’s Luisa en el país de la realidad (1987a)………………………………………………………………. 227 5.10. Resonance between Personal and Public Narratives of Motherhood and Female Subjectivity…………………………………………………………… 231 5.11. Selective Appropriation and the Subversion of Catholic Myths………… 243 5.12. Framing the Body………………………………………………………... 246 5.13. Conclusion ……………………………………………………………… 250 Chapter 6: Renarration and the Canonisation of Rigoberta Menchú’s Testimonio…… 253 6.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………. 253 6.2. Canon Formation and the Culture Wars………………………………….. 254 6.3. Renarration and the Canonisation of Menchú’s Testimonio: Construction, Translation and Reception…………………………………………………….. 257 6.3.1. First Moment of Intervention…………………………………… 257 6.3.2. Second Moment of Intervention………………………………… 261 6.3.3. Third Moment of Intervention…………………………………... 267 6.4. The Central Position of the TT: I, Rigoberta Menchú (1984) and the Renarration of a Lost Original ………………………………………………… 270 6.4.1. Frame Ambiguity and “The Secrets of Rigoberta” …………….. 279 6.4.2. Selective Appropriation and the Critical Reception of Gender………………………………………………………………… 283 6.4.3. Framing the Interplay between Menchú’s Personal Narratives of Female Subjectivity and Motherhood and a Public Narrative of Indigenous Resistance…………………………………………………………….. 287 6.5. Menchú’s Memoir. Writing and Translating as a Socio-Narrative Response to Canonisation…………………………………………………………………... 293 6.5.1. Framing Questions of Authorship and Authority………………. 294 6.5.2. Frame Ambiguity and Issues of Representativity……………….298 6.5.3. Causal Emplotment and Selective Appropriation in Menchú’s Personal Narrative of Motherhood and Female Subjectivity………….. 299 6.6. Conclusion………………………………………………………………... 308 4 Chapter 7: Conclusion………………………………………………………………… 310 7.1. Summary of Findings…………………………………………………….. 310 7.2. Limitations of the Project………………………………………………… 317 7.3. Suggestions for Future Research…………………………………………. 318 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………………... 320 Appendix A…………………………………………………………………………..... 341 Appendix B……………………………………………………………………………. 342 Appendix C……………………………………………………………………………. 361 Word Count: 87,523 words 5 List of Figures Figure 2.1: World system of translation and its core-periphery model (Heilbron, 1999)............. 39 Figure 2.2: The location of Central American women’s writing in relation to the Anglophone market (A core-periphery model) ......................................................................................... 46 Figure 4.1: Front cover of They Won’t Take Me Alive (1987) .................................................... 109 Figure 4.2: Front cover of No me agarran viva (1983) .............................................................. 110 Figure 4.3: Paratextual framing of No me agarran viva (1987): “Prólogo” ............................... 112 Figure 4.4: Paratextual framing of They Won’t Take Me Alive (1987): “About This Book” ..... 113 Figure 4.5: Back cover of No me agarran viva (1983) ............................................................... 116 Figure 4.6: Back cover of They Won’t Take Me Alive (1987) .................................................... 117 Figure 4.7: Excerpt of new text included only in TT They Won’t Take Me Alive (1987) .......... 121 Figure 4.8: Part II of the same excerpt ........................................................................................ 122 Figure 4.9: Photo of Eugenia in ST No me agarran viva (Alegría and Flakoll, 1983: 8)........... 127 Figure 4.10: Photo of Eugenia and her daughter Ana Patricia in ST (1983: 48) ........................ 128 Figure 5.1: Back cover of Luisa en el país de la realidad (1987a) as published by La Pereza Ediciones in 2013 ................................................................................................................ 186 Figure 5.2: Front cover of Luisa in Realityland (Alegría, 1987) ................................................ 188 Figure 5.3: Front cover of Luisa en el país de la realidad as published by UCA Editores (El Salvador) in 1997 ................................................................................................................ 189 Figure 5.4: Front cover of Luisa en el país de la realidad published by Pereza Ediciones (Miami) in 2013................................................................................................................................. 190 Figure 5.5: Back cover of La mujer habitada (1988) as published by Txalaparta in 1990 ........ 196 Figure 5.6: Front cover of The Inhabited Woman (Belli, 1994) as published by Warner Books in 1995 ..................................................................................................................................... 199 Figure 5.7: Back cover of The Inhabited Woman (Belli, 1994) .................................................. 200 Figure 5.8: Poem