Special Session

Ancient and Medieval / Adaptation and Translation Studies

Lisa Weston (California State University - Fresno)
lisa@****.com (Log-in to reveal)

While translations of canonical ancient and medieval texts are often judged merely on their literal faithfulness, every translation is fundamentally a creative-critical interpretation of the past. This session explores the rich entanglements of translation and temporality, welcoming traditional scholarship that analyzes existing translations of classical or medieval works. We extend a particular invitation, however, to presenters who wish to experiment with, model, and perform translation as a dynamic, creative-critical practice that bridges the premodern and the (post)modern.

Modern readers may commonly look to translations of canonical texts from the ancient and/or medieval past (Beowulf, for example) for their utility in making available otherwise linguistically inaccessible literary artifacts, and may judge them merely on their literal faithfulness to the original text. In doing that, they may overlook or ignore the extent to which every translation is also an interpretation of the past. As theorists like Delphine Grass have argued, however, less literal translation can constitute in itself a creative-critical act.

"Translation and Temporality: Rewriting Ancient and Medieval Texts for the (Post)Modern World" seeks to gather together in conversation multiple ways of interrogating a range of entanglements of translation and temporality:

How do (post)modern poets approach the translation of premodern (classical and medieval) texts?

How “faithful” must they be to the original text—if that is even possible or desirable? When does translation become adaptation? Response? Homage? When does it become metaphor?

How—and to what end—are the affordances of previous forms of a language (Old or Middle English, for instance, as recreated by poets such as Jos Charles) rendered into modern forms?

How can the acts and products of the translations of texts from the past be used to interrogate and/or critique our own world? Or—vice versa—how can the realities and anxieties of the present be brought to bear on our understanding of the past?

And what about contemporary translations of medieval texts that are themselves translations and/or adaptations of ancient works?

The "Translation and Temporality" session welcomes traditional scholarship that offers analysis of existing translations of any classical or medieval text(s). It extends a particular invitation, however, to presenters who wish to experiment, model, and perform translation as a creative-critical practice.