Javier Marias's Debt to Translation - Sterne, Browne, Nabokov (Hardcover)

This is a book about translation and literary influence. It takes as its subject Spain's most important contemporary novelist, Javier Marias (1951-), who worked as a literary translator for a significant portion of his early career. Since then, he has maintained that translation had a crucial impact on the development of his writing style and his literary frame of reference. It examines his claims to the influence of three writers whose works he translated, Laurence Sterne, Sir Thomas Browne, and Vladimir Nabokov. It does so by engaging in close reading of his translations, examining how he meets the linguistic, syntactic, and cultural challenges they present. His prolonged engagement with their prose is then set alongside his own novels and short stories, the better to discern precisely how and in what ways his works have been shaped by their influence and through translation. Hence this study begins by asking why Marias should have turned to translation in the cultural landscape of Spain in the 1970s and how the ideological standpoints that animated his decision affect the way he translates. His translation of Sterne's Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman is set alongside his pseudo-autobiographical novel Negra espalda del tiempo (Dark Back of Time), while his translation of Sir Thomas Browne's Urn Burial is then analysed in tandem with that produced by Jorge Luis Borges and Adolfo Bioy Casares. Subsequent chapters examine how Browne's prose has shaped Marias's thinking on oblivion, posterity, and time. The final chapters offer an analysis of the partial translation and palimpsest of Lolita he undertook in the early 1990s and of his most ambitious novel to date, Tu rostro manana (Your Face Tomorrow), as a work in which characterization is underpinned by both literary allusion and the hydridization of works Marias has translated.

General

Imprint:	Oxford UniversityPress
Country of origin:	United Kingdom
Series:	Oxford Modern Languages and Literature Monographs
Release date:	May 2012
Authors:	Gareth J. Wood
Dimensions:	223 x 149 x 26mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	362
ISBN-13:	978-0-19-965133-7
Categories:	Books > Language & Literature > Language & linguistics > Translation & interpretation > General Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Literary studies > From 1900 Books > Language & Literature > Literature: history & criticism > Novels, other prose & writers > General Promotions
LSN:	0-19-965133-7
Barcode:	9780199651337

Is the information for this product incomplete, wrong or inappropriate? Let us know about it.

Does this product have an incorrect or missing image? Send us a new image.

Is this product missing categories? Add more categories.

Review This Product

No reviews yet - be the first to create one!