Cover not available

In:Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology
Edited by Luc van Doorslaer, Peter Flynn and Joep Leerssen
[Benjamins Translation Library 119] 2016
► pp. 53–67

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

National images in transit

Historical fiction and its translation in an age of competing nationalisms

Published online: 25 February 2016
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.119.04ing
Using a neglected case study, this essay questions the links between the rise and spread of historical fiction in nineteenth-century Europe, the use of national images, and the dissemination of an essentialist Romantic ideology of national character. It first examines various national stereotypes in Thomas Colley Grattan’s The Heiress of Bruges (1830), a novel set in the Low Countries around 1600. As they rely on different discourses on nationality and national character, Grattan’s national images turn out to be comparatively unstable. The essay then confirms this instability by contrasting the transformations of the novel’s hetero-images into auto-images in competing Belgian and Dutch translations, which appeared after the break-up of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands in the 1830s.
Article outline
  • Introduction
  • Grattan’s The Heiress of Bruges: A neglected historical novel
  • Grattan’s rhetoric of national character
  • The Belgian and Dutch translations of The Heiress of Bruges
  • References
References (23)
References
Anon. 1831. “Living Literary Characters, vol. 7. Thomas Colley Grattan.” New Monthly Magazine 32: 77–80.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Barnaby, Paul. 2011. “Restoration Politics and Sentimental Poetics in A.-J.-B. Defauconpret’s Translations of Sir Walter Scott.” Translation and Literature 20: 6–28. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Beller, Manfred and Joep Leerssen, eds. 2007. Imagology. The Cultural Construction and Literary Representation of National Characters. Amsterdam: Rodopi.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Boase, G.C. and Norman Vance. s.d. “Thomas Colley Grattan.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. No pagination.
Connolly, Claire. 2003. “Completing the Union? The Irish Novel and the Moment of Union.” In The Irish Act of Union, 1800: Bicentennial Essays, ed. by Michael Brown, Patrick M. Geoghegan and James Kelly, 157–176. Dublin: Irish Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Custine, Sophie. 2010. A Comparison between The Heiress of Bruges and its Translation into French. Unpublished MA thesis, KU Leuven.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
De Groot, Jerome. 2010. The Historical Novel. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
D’hulst, Lieven. 1997. “La traduction: un genre à l’époque romantique?” Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 97 (3): 391–400.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grattan, Thomas Colley. 1830. The History of the Netherlands. London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1831. The Heiress of Bruges. A Tale of the Year Sixteen Hundred. 2nd edition. 3 vols. London: Colburn and Bentley.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1837. L’héritière de Bruges. Histoire de l’année 1600. Roman historique belge. Traduit par M. [Joseph-Octave] Delepierre. 3 vols. Bruxelles: Wahlen.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1840. De erfdochter van Brugge. Een verhaal uit de Nederlandsche geschiedenis. 3 vols. Deventer: ter Gunne.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1862. Beaten Paths, and Those who Trod Them. London: Chapman and Hall.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hale, Terry. 2002. “Translation in Distress: Cultural Misappropriation and the Construction of the Gothic.” In European Gothic: A Spirited Exchange 1760–1960, ed. by Avril Horner, 17–38. Manchester: Manchester University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ingelbien, Raphaël and Vincent Eelen. 2012. “Literaire bemiddelaars in bewogen tijden: Thomas Colley Grattan, zijn bronnen en vertalers in de (ex-)Nederlanden, 1828–1840.” Tijdschrift voor Nederlandse Taal- en Letterkunde 128 (3–4): 239–254.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leemans, Inger. 2009. “The Translation Machine: The Business of Cultural Transmission.” In Niederländische-Deutsche Kulturbeziehungen 1600–1830, ed. by Jan Konst, Bettina Noak and Inger Leemans, 343–356. Berlin: Ruprecht Verlag.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Leerssen, Joep. 2000. “The Rhetoric of National Character: A Programmatic Survey.” Poetics Today 21 (2): 267–292. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2006. National Thought in Europe: A Cultural History. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Lukács, György. 1962. The Historical Novel. Translated by Hannah and Stanley Mitchell. London: Merlin Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moke, Henri-Guillaume. 1827. Le gueux de mer, ou, la Belgique sous le duc d’Albe. Bruxelles: Sacré.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pittock, Murray, ed. 2006. The Reception of Sir Walter Scott in Europe. London: Continuum.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Simpson, Erik. 2010. Mercenaries in British and American Literature, 1790–1830: Writing, Fighting and Marrying for Money. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Sas, N.C.F. 1985. Onze natuurlijkste bondgenoot: Nederland, Engeland en Europa, 1813–1831 . Groningen: Wolters-Noordhoff.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue