Translation and World Literature

Abstract

Translation plays an important role in creating the category of 'world literature', a term that has acquired new currency in this era of globalization. Commenting on essays I suggest that the global spread of modernism and its local flowerings need to be understood through the vigorous translation activity that accompanied it. I focus on vernacular modernisms in India between the 1920s and 1960s in order to show that the impact of translation was by no means unidirectional or targeted towards the West. Translation from both European and non-European languages was an indispensable element in the climate of Indian modernist writing, especially as printed in the poetry magazines of the early twentieth century. The simultaneously local and cosmopolitan character of this modernist literary corpus, far more important and extensive than Indian literature in English, can only be understood through a continuation of the project of modernism's translations.

Global modernist studies: Asian perspectives

“…We should also take heed of the increasing dominance of the English language in considering the pivotal role played by translation not only in the global spread of modernism in the past but also in the rapid emergence of global modernist studies in the present. For instance, a failure to do so might condemn the rich body of Indian vernacular modernisms to oblivion as our eyes are clouded by “the global ascendancy of the English language,” as Supriya Chaudhuri warns (2012, p. 595). Last but not least, global modernist studies will benefit more from further attention to the great diversity of institutional structures in which research and teaching are embedded both in Asia and elsewhere.…”

Untitled

“…vemos un marcado interés por las relaciones entre literatura mundial y traducción (DYRE 2009;XIE and SHI 2011;CHAUDHURI 2012;EMMERICH 2013;MORGAN 2013;CASANOVA 2015;WALKOWITZ 2015;GAMBIER and VAN DOORSLAER 2016). Asimismo, observamos un cuestionamiento renovado de la definición de canon literario (INSKO 2003;KERMODE 2004;FISHELOV 2010), llegándose incluso a declarar el inicio de la era hipercanónica (DAMROSCH 2006).…”

Nanda‐bangshochchhed and Hariraj: Re‐configuring Politics and the Private Mind in Two Bengali Adaptations of Hamlet

“…This essay will consider in some detail two plays, Nanda‐bangshochchhed and Hariraj , as adaptations of Hamlet . These two plays may be linked to the phenomenon of the “emergence of the modern literatures of India, from the nineteenth century onwards,” which was “decisively influenced by the new protocols of print and by the necessity of engaging with a public sphere constituted by colonial knowledge‐systems and their discourses of power” (Chaudhuri 595). In line with these developments, these two plays participate in another first‐time phenomenon engendered by colonial modernity, namely, the emergence of a European‐style commercial public stage in Bengal that claimed itself to be a “national theatre.” These two plays cross‐fertilize elements of Shakespearean reception with indigenously inherited codes of aesthetics and cultural expectations.…”

“…In line with these developments, these two plays participate in another first‐time phenomenon engendered by colonial modernity, namely, the emergence of a European‐style commercial public stage in Bengal that claimed itself to be a “national theatre.” These two plays cross‐fertilize elements of Shakespearean reception with indigenously inherited codes of aesthetics and cultural expectations. The plays, typical of colonial modernity in Bengal, also try to straddle and come to terms with the “break with the pre‐modern, already experienced as a form of trauma by the colonial subject” which was “compounded by the widening rift between rural and urban, textual and oral cultures” (Chaudhuri 595). The most powerful channel for the dissemination of Shakespeare in India was the pedagogy established under the aegis of the colonial administration, but educational institutions mostly served to consolidate the canonical image of the colonizer's bard while the larger literary community (including playwrights in Indian languages) “responded to Shakespeare in an unsystematic manner but perhaps more creatively and with a greater measure of freedom” (Das 54).…”