After ... life in creative translation : a critical study of modern English poetic translations from selected Greek, Latin, and Italian poets
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Date
2012-07-20
Authors
Andrew, Michael Guy
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Abstract
The scope of the research is indicated by the sub-title, “A Critical Study of Modern
English Poetic Translations from Selected Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets”: the poets
selected are Homer, Catullus, Horace, Ovid, and Dante, and the translations are by a
range of modern English poet-translators. After an opening chapter that is mainly
theoretical, the study offers detailed critical analyses of the original poems or extracts and
also of the translations into modern English poetry, to investigate whether the modern
English poetic translations confirm the validity of Middleton’s claim, “how centrally the
art of translation has mattered in the history of English poetry” (Christopher Middleton in
“The Presence of Translation: A View of English Poetry” in The Art of Translation:
Voices from the Field, edited by Rosanna Warren (Boston: Northeastern University Press,
1989), p. 258). The analysis assesses the achievement of twentieth-century English poettranslators
in their translations of the selected Greek, Latin, and Italian extracts or poems
and demonstrates that poetic translations have become a peculiarly sensitive form of
literary criticism as well as creative works of art in their own right. The research
concludes by formulating some critical categories of and criteria for creative translation
that will assist in the practice of poetic translation and in the critical examination of poetic translations.
Description
Ph.D. University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Humanities, 2012