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This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ Reanimating Greek Tragedy How Contemporary Poets Translate for the Stage Latham, Caroline Susan Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 30. Sep. 2021 Reanimating Greek Tragedy How Contemporary Poets Translate for the Stage Caroline Susan Latham Degree: Doctor of Philosophy in Classics Research (Field of study: the modern reception of Greek tragedy) 1 Abstract This thesis starts from the premise that modern poets have proved effective translators of Greek tragedy for the stage and is a hermeneutic consideration of why and how they succeeded. The spread of the close analysis is a period from 1981 to the present day. Four poets, Tony Harrison, Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and Tom Paulin, are considered in detail, while other translators, such as Liz Lochhead and Timberlake Wertenbaker, are used as comparators. The four poets’ translations are considered within the context of their whole poetic output, to enhance an understanding of each poet’s intentions. The major influences on these four poets are also scrutinized. The introduction provides the methodology, including the choice of modern scholarship to be cited in support or to be challenged. It provides a brief historical survey of translating the classics and describes the tools provided by modern academic disciplines which help to analyse the poets’ achievements. The bulk of the thesis consists of three chapters, each focusing on one aspect of poetic choice which contributes to the appeal of a work. In each chapter, a close comparison is made between the same source text but different translators. Thus, Harrison and Hughes both provide a version of the Oresteia, considered in terms of metre, rhyme and general structure, Heaney and Paulin both produced a version of Antigone, examined for the use of Ulster and Irish vernacular and Harrison and Paulin created very free adaptations of Prometheus, which are considered as part of a broad review of cultural overlay, modernising and democratising in producing Greek tragedy on the contemporary stage. The conclusion synthesises the strands, signposting possible further research. It celebrates the poets’ achievement - and contemporary British theatre for embracing Greek tragedy, as it currently does. It ends with a brief manifesto for the future. 2 Acknowledgements I am greatly indebted to a number of people who have contributed in diverse ways to the completion of this enterprise. Foremost is my inspirational first supervisor, Professor Edith Hall. Not only did she take a chance on a very mature student with no classical background beyond a deep love of drama; she was also generous with her time, encouragement, enthusiasm and encyclopaedic knowledge of both ancient Greece and modern theatre. My second supervisor, Doctor Ismene Lada-Richards, was a constant reassuring presence throughout the process, always positive and a source of practical advice. I offer heartfelt thanks to the inestimable Sue Willetts, Senior Library Assistant and repository of all knowledge at the Institute of Classical Studies, in Senate House. She never failed to locate an appropriate text, however recondite the request. Thanks also to my ‘study buddy’, Margaret Hilditch, for our almost daily exchange of experiences, as we both navigated exciting but daunting new territory. She was an excellent travelling companion and kept me focused and sane on the uphill stages of the journey, as we moved forward together. I must give thanks, too, for the unwavering cheerfulness of my friend and sounding-board, Maria Tingle. She helped maintain my work-life balance with regular diversions, both cultural and gastronomic, which were greatly appreciated. Last, but definitely not least, I must express my vast gratitude to my husband, who supported me unstintingly along the route and appeared to be genuinely interested in what was, most definitely, all Greek to him. 3 Contents Introduction...........................................................................................................................6 ‘The Browning Version’: A Case Study..............................................................................43 Chapter 1: Metre in the Translations of Ted Hughes and Tony Harrison................................64 Chapter 2: Cadence and Ulster English: The Translations of Seamus Heaney and Tom Paulin (also referencing Liz Lochhead)........................................................................................151 Chapter 3: The Colour of Language and the Lure of the Modern..........................................232 Conclusion........................................................................................................................301 Appendix 1: Greek Prosody................................................................................................309 Appendix 2: The Scottish Doric Dialect...............................................................................312 Appendix 3: Theatre Lab’s Oresteia.....................................................................................314 Bibliography......................................................................................................................315 4 List of Illustrations Figure 1: A Corner of the Villa, a painting by Sir Edward John Poynter (1836-1919). Image accessed online courtesy of the Art Renewal Centre, via the ArtMagick website. Figure 2: A Portrait of Lucrezia de Medici, a painting by Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1572). Image accessed online courtesy of Wikimedia. Figure 3: Photograph of Agamemnon chorus from Peter Hall’s Oresteia, courtesy of the National Theatre archive. Figure 4: Photograph of Walter Sparrow in role as the Old Man, a still image from Prometheus (1999) by Tony Harrison, accessed online courtesy of Film4.com. Figure 5: Photograph of Kirkgate abattoir (undated), York Road, Leeds, courtesy of Leodis, an online photographic archive of Leeds. Figure 6: Photograph of ritual bathing of Agamemnon from 2012 Theatre Lab production of Oresteia, privately acquired courtesy of Theatre Lab and Anastasia Revi (director). Figure 7: Photograph of the trial of Orestes from 2012 Theatre Lab production of Oresteia, privately acquired courtesy of Theatre Lab and Anastasia Revi (director). 5 INTRODUCTION Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne: Yet did I never breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold (John Keats, October 1816) When Keats wrote ‘On first looking into Chapman’s Homer’, he was not praising George Chapman’s translation skills per se but responding, rather, to a fellow-poet’s vitality.1 Keats was introduced to Chapman when a friend, Charles Cowden Clarke, read aloud the episode of Odysseus’ shipwreck; Clark found the sonnet on his table the following morning. We may accept it as an honest account of a damascene moment on the road to Keats fulfilling his own creative genius. He is unequivocal: it is Chapman’s voice he hears, ‘loud and bold’, re- invigorating Homer who had, until that moment, been little more than a name to Keats. Indeed, Professor Susan Bassnett, a specialist in the field of translation and cultural studies, also chooses this sonnet to illustrate her argument in an essay on the translator as creative writer, and considers it: ‘Perhaps the best example of a writer’s inspiration through translation’, further commenting: ‘[...] the power and magnificence of Homer has come to life for him [Keats] through the work of a long-dead Renaissance translator’ (2006: 174). How did Chapman’s magic work? This thesis will explore some of the creative freedoms that poets enjoy, compared to the scholar, in an attempt to establish how and why poets produce eminently readable—and, crucially, speakable—translations of classical texts. We will focus upon Greek drama, a literary form that requires the realisation of a translation in performance before we can fully judge its quality. The plays selected for close study are tragedies, including works by all three of the great 5th-century writers. Comedy is merely referenced, with no intention to denigrate the genre, but for purely practical reasons. The tragedies selected are drawn from plays with well-documented recent performances to analyse, which