Virginia Woolf and the Migrations of Language [Hardcover]

An extended discussion of the impact of classical and European literature on Woolf's writing.Dalgarno offers an extended discussion of the influence of the foreign writers whom Woolf considered most important to her work - Sophocles, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Proust, from the perspective of translation theory.Dalgarno offers an extended discussion of the influence of the foreign writers whom Woolf considered most important to her work - Sophocles, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Proust, from the perspective of translation theory.Virginia Woolf's rich and imaginative use of language was partly a result of her keen interest in foreign literatures and languages  mainly Greek and French, but also Russian, German and Italian. As a translator she naturally addressed herself both to contemporary standards of translation within the university, but also to readers like herself. In Three Guineas she ranged herself among German scholars who used Antigone to critique European politics of the 1930s. Orlando outwits the censors with a strategy that focuses on Proust's untranslatable word. The Waves and The Years show her looking ahead to the problems of postcolonial society, where translation crosses borders. In this first in-depth study of Woolf and European languages and literatures, Emily Dalgarno opens up a rewarding new way of reading her prose.Introduction; 1. Translation and ethnography in 'On Not Knowing Greek'; 2. Antigone and the public language; 3. Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and the Russian soul; 4. Proust and the fictions of the unconscious; 5. Translation and iterability; 6. Assia Djebar and the poetics of lamentation; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index. By forging new connections between Woolf studies and translation studies, Dalgarnos project contributes richly to both.
Woolf Studies Annual Dalgarnos learned study bears witness not only to Woolfs art but also to the way that her art turns away from England to translations and the untranslatable as a way to help us sel.