Translation and the Classic : Identity As Change in the History of Culture / Edited by Alexandra Lianeri and Vanda Zajko
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CLASSICAL PRESENCES General Editors Lorna Hardwick James I. Porter CLASSICAL PRESENCES The texts, ideas, images, and material culture of ancient Greece and Rome have always been crucial to attempts to appropriate the past in order to authenticate the present. They underlie the mapping of change and the assertion and challenging of values and identities, old and new. Classical Presences brings the latest scholarship to bear on the contexts, theory, and practice of such use, and abuse, of the classical past. Translation and the Classic Identity as Change in the History of Culture Edited by ALEXANDRA LIANERI and VANDA ZAJKO 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With oYces in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Oxford University Press 2008 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Translation and the classic : identity as change in the history of culture / edited by Alexandra Lianeri and Vanda Zajko. p. cm. ISBN 978–0–19–928807–6 1. Classical literature—Translations—History and criticism. 2. Transmission of texts. I. Lianaeri, Alexandra. II. Zajko, Vanda. PA3012.T735 2008 880.09—dc22 2008009782 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by CPI Anthony Rowe, Chippenham, Wiltshire ISBN 978–0–19–928807–6 13579108642 Acknowledgements This volume is the result of a collective process and so we are most grateful to the contributors for their diligence and efficiency. We would like to thank Bob Fowler and everyone involved with the Institute of Greece, Rome, and the Classical Tradition at the University of Bristol for their support and advice at the initial stages of the project. A number of people have contributed to our work, both directly and indirectly. Alexandra would like to thank Susan Bassnett, Theo Hermans, Maria Tymoczko, and Law- rence Venuti for sharing their expertise in translation studies; Paul Cart- ledge, Robin Osborne and Geoffrey Lloyd for insightful comments on the historicity of translation; Eutychia Bathrellou, Miriam Leonard, and Kostas Vlassopoulos for illuminating discussions and invaluable personal support; Harris Karapostolis for his kind encouragement and for suggesting the works used in the cover of the book; Yorgos Augoustis for perspicacious discussions on every aspect of the book as well as constant intellectual and personal companionship; and her family for its unfailing trust and sup- port. We are both grateful to the anonymous readers for their critical suggestions and Hilary O’Shea for her support and patience throughout this project. This page intentionally left blank Contents List of Contributors ix Introduction 1 Alexandra Lianeri and Vanda Zajko: Still Being Read after so Many Years: Rethinking the Classic through Translation I. THEORIZING TRANSLATION AND THE CLASSIC 1. Lawrence Venuti: Translation, Interpretation, Canon Formation 27 2. John Sallis: The End of Translation 52 3. Andrew Benjamin: Political Translations: Ho¨lderlin’s Das Ho¨chste 63 4. Charles Martindale: Dryden’s Ovid: Aesthetic Translation and the Idea of the Classic 83 5. Johan Geertsema: Between Homage and Critique: Coetzee, Translation, and the Classic 110 6. Neville Morley: ‘Das Altertum das la¨sst sich nicht u¨bersetzen’: Translation and Untranslatability in Ancient History 128 7. Joanna Paul: Homer and Cinema: Translation and Adaptation in Le Me´pris 148 II. THE SURVIVAL OF THE CLASSIC: TRACING THE HISTORY OF TRANSLATIONS 8. Richard H. Armstrong: Classical Translations of the Classics: The Dynamics of Literary Tradition in Retranslating Epic Poetry 169 9. Azzedine Haddour: Tradition, Translation, and Colonization: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement and Deconstructing the Classics 203 10. Fred Parker: Classic Simplicity 227 11. Dan Hooley: Raising the Dead: Marlowe’s Lucan 243 viii Contents 12. J. Michael Walton: ‘An Agreeable Innovation’: Play and Translation 261 13. Deborah H. Roberts: Translation and the ‘Surreptitious Classic’: Obscenity and Translatability 278 III. CONTESTING THE CLASSIC: THE POLITICS OF TRANSLATION PRACTICE 14. Edith Hall: Navigating the Realms of Gold: Translation as Access Route to the Classics 315 15. Lorna Hardwick: Translated Classics Around the Millennium: Vibrant Hybrids or Shattered Icons? 341 16. Dimitris N. Maronitis: Intralingual Translation: Genuine and False Dilemmas 367 17. Seth L. Schein: Translating Aeschylean Choral Lyric: Agamemnon 367–474 387 18. J. M. Coetzee: Working with Translators 407 Index 421 List of Contributors Richard H. Armstrong is Associate Professor of Classical Studies and Fellow in the Honors College, University of Houston. He is author of A Compulsion for Antiquity: Freud and the Ancient World (Cornell University Press, 2005) and numerous articles on cultural reception and translation studies. Andrew Benjamin is Professor of Critical Theory and Philosophical Aesthet- ics at Monash University. His books include Philosophy’s Literature (Clinamen Press, 2001) and Style and Time. Essays on the Politics of Appearance (North- western University Press, 2006). J. M. Coetzee is currently Visiting Professor of Humanities at the University of Adelaide. He is the author of eleven novels, as well as of essays, memoirs, and translations. In 2003 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Johan Geertsema is an assistant professor in the University Scholars Pro- gramme, National University of Singapore. Among his research interests are the work of J. M. Coetzee; Romanticism, particularly theories of irony and of the sublime as these intersect with colonialism; and the theory and practice of translation. Azzedine Haddour is Senior Lecturer in French at University College London. He is author of Colonial Myths, History and Narrative (Manchester University Press, 2000), co-editor of City Visions (Longman, 2000), co-translator of Sartre’s Colonialism and Neocolonialism (Routledge, 2001), and editor of The Fanon Reader (Pluto, 2006). Edith Hall is Professor of Classical Theatre at Royal Holloway, University of London, where she is Director of the Centre for the Reception of Greece and Rome. She is also Co-founder and Co-director of the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama at Oxford. Her latest publications include The Theatrical Cast of Athens: Interactions between Ancient Greek Drama & Society (Oxford University Press, 2006), Cultural Responses to the Persian Wars: Antiquity to the Third Millennium (Oxford University Press, 2007) co-edited with E. Bridges and P. J. Rhodes, and Aristophanes in Performance (Legenda, 2007), co-edited with Amanda Wrigley. Lorna Hardwick teaches at the Open University where she is Professor of Classical Studies and Director of the Reception of Classical Texts Research x List of Contributors Project. She is especially interested in the role of Greek and Roman material in modern literature and theatre and in cultural politics. Dan Hooley is Professor of Classics at the University of Missouri. He has written three books: Roman Satire (Blackwell, 2007), The Knotted Thong: Structures of Mimesis in Persius (Susquehanna University Press, 1997), and The Classics in Paraphrase: Ezra Pound and Modern Translators of Latin Poetry (University of Michigan Press, 1988), and a number of articles and book chapters on Roman poetry, post-classical reception, and translation studies. A book on the reception of satire is in preparation. From 1999 to 2006 he was the editor of Classical and Modern Literature. Alexandra Lianeri has been the Moses and Mary Finley Fellow at Darwin College, Cambridge, and is currently visiting lecturer at the universities of Athens and Thessaloniki. She has published in the fields of translation theory, classical reception studies, critical theory, and the theory and history of historiography. She is completing a book entitled Towards a New Athens: Translating De¯mokratia in Nineteenth-Century English Thought (Oxford Uni- versity Press, forthcoming) and editing a volume on Ancient History and Western Historical Thought: Theorising Time (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming). Dimitris Maronitis is emeritus professor of the Faculty of Philosophy of the Aristotelian