Intertextuality in Translation: modelling the textual relationships in translation

Abstract

Traditionally, translation scholars draw on the concept of intertextuality when discussing the difficulty of rendering literary references. More recently, translation has been also viewed as generating new intertextual relationships. This thesis enquires into the full extent of intertextuality in translation, including interrelations between translations. Recognising the complexity of intertextual networks, the thesis proposes a conceptual model to articulate and analyse the refracted nature of literary meaning transmitted via translation.

The thesis comprises an introduction, four chapters and a conclusion. Chapter One draws on existing intertextuality theory to construct a theoretical model which accommodates translators and target readers as participants in the communication and recognition of intertextuality in translation. Chapters Two to Four test the model by means of case studies from Classical, English and German literature.

Chapter Two examines a case of intertextuality in philological translation. Modern scholars have read in Tibullus’ first love elegy (c. 27 BC) references to poetry by Virgil, Horace and Propertius. These new critical insights are reflected in recent German and English translations by Georg Luck (1964, 1996) and Guy Lee (1975, 1982, 1990), who draw on each other’s versions in the process.

Chapter Three investigates intertextual relationships between relay-translations, re- translations and back-translations. Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werther (1774) features a lengthy German translation from James Macpherson’s Ossian (1765). Most of the seventeen English translations of Werther resort to the English source text as well as to earlier English and French versions of the novel.

Chapter Four discusses an exchange of modern classics in translation. Ulrich Plenzdorf’s Die Neuen Leiden des jungen W. (1973) echoes Goethe’s Werther and – via a German translation – J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951). The English translation by Kenneth P. Wilcox (1979) draws on an English translation of Werther and, to an extent, on Salinger’s original.