In:Landscapes of Realism: Rethinking literary realism in comparative perspectives
Edited by Dirk Göttsche, Rosa Mucignat and Robert Weninger
[Comparative History of Literatures in European Languages XXXII] 2021
► pp. 231–244
Realism and translation
Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre for an Austro-Hungarian minority and beyond
Published online: 21 April 2021
https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xxxii.08juk
https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xxxii.08juk
Abstract
Drawing on Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre (1847), I first show how the Victorian novel
processes translation out of the narrative in order to espouse the metonymic imperative of realism. While this may be how the
relation of realism and translation is decided in the Victorian novel, I argue that the subsequent history of translation of
Brontë’s novel remains inflected in this relation. Taking Croatian translations of Jane Eyre as a case study, I
analyze the ways in which they remain predicated on the metonymic imperative of realism, first in Austria-Hungary, when metonymy
on these terms was adopted by Austro-Hungarian minorities as a vehicle of modern self-definition, and then in a process that
survives the historical Austria-Hungary well into the twentieth century, in Yugoslav modernity for instance. What these
translations ultimately sustain, and reveal, is radical realism: not a poetics so much as an apparatus instrumental to negotiating
the modern condition in the past two centuries.
Keywords: realism, translation, metonymy, the Victorian novel, Austria-Hungary, Croatian literature
Article outline
- 1.Translation and the education of the Victorian novel
- 2. Jane Eyre in Austria-Hungary, en route to Yugoslavia
- 3.Translation, visuality and modernity on Austro-Hungarian terms
- 4.Realism in the twentieth century: Metonymy into allegory
- 5.Realism as radical modernity: From kinship to collectives
Works cited
References (32)
Auerbach, Erich. 2003. Mimesis:
The Representation of Reality in Western
Literature, translated by Willard R. Trask. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Birch-Pfeiffer, Charlotte. 1892. Die
Waise aus Lowood – Mit freier Benutzung des Romans von Currer
Bell. Leipzig: Reclam.
Blažeković, Tatjana. 1957. Engleska
književnost i njene veze s hrvatskom modernom (1900–1914). Doktorska disertacija. Zagreb: Faculty of Philosophy, University of Zagreb.
Brontë, Charlotte. N.d. Jane
Eyre, translated by Tin Ujević. Manuscript.
. 1974a. Jane
Eyre, translated by Giga Gračan and Andrijana Hewitt. Zagreb: Nakladni zavod Matice hrvatske.
Cléro, Jean-Pierre. 2014. “Experiment/
Experience.” Dictionary of
Untranslatables, edited by Barbara Cassin, Emily Apter, Jacques Lezra and Michael Wood, 329–31. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press.
Deleuze, Gilles. 1998. Essays
Critical and Clinical, translated
by Daniel W. Smith and Michael A. Greco. London, New York: Verso.
Deleuze, Gilles, and Claire Parnet. 2007. Dialogues
II, translated by Hugh Tomlinson and Barbara Habberjam. New York: Columbia University Press.
Dragojević, Nataša, and Fikret Cacan. 1988. Svjetska
književnost u hrvatskim prijevodima (1945–1985).
Bibliografija. Zagreb: Društvo hrvatskih književnih prevodilaca.
Elias-Bursać, Ellen. 2003. Riječi,
šiknule iz tmine: Augustin Ujević i književno
prevođenje. Zagreb: Erasmus Naklada, Društvo hrvatskih književnih prevodilaca.
Ewbank, Inga-Stina. 2000. “Adapting
Jane Eyre: Jakob Spitzer’s Die Waise aus
Lowood
.” Beiträge zur Rezeption der
britischen und irischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts im deutschsprachigen
Raum, edited by Norbert Bachleitner, 283–92. Atlanta: Rodopi.
Gagnier, Regenia. 2018. Literatures
of Liberalization: Global Circulation and the Long Nineteenth
Century. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
Gračan, Giga. 2008. “Prevoditeljičin
post
scriptum.” In Charlotte Brontë, Jane
Eyre, 601–604. Zagreb: Naklada Ljevak.
Jakobson, Roman. 1987. Language
in Literature, edited by Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Košutić-Brozović, Nevenka. 1980–1981. “O
prepjevima i prijevodima Tina
Ujevića.” Croatica 15/16: 105–35.
Levine, George. 2008. Realism,
Ethics and Secularism: Essays on Victorian Literature and
Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Osterhammel, Jürgen. 2014. The
Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth
Century, translated by Patrick Camiller. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Prins, Yopie. 2017. Ladies’
Greek: Victorian Translations of
Tragedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Rubik, Margarete. 2015. “Jane
Eyre on the German
Stage.” In Anglo-German
Theatrical Exchange, edited by Rudolf Weiss, Ludwig Schnauder and Dieter Fuchs, 283–304. Leiden, Amsterdam: Brill, Rodopi.
Said, Edward. 2003. “Introduction.” In Erich Auerbach, Mimesis:
The Representation of Reality in Western
Literature, i–xxiv. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Ujević, Tin. 1965. “George
Meredith.” Sabrana djela IX: eseji, rasprave,
članci II, edited by Drago Ivanišević, 46–64. Zagreb: Znanje.
Weber-Kapusta, Danijela. 2015. “Ideali
obitelji i ženskog identiteta u hrvatskom kazalištu druge polovice 19. stoljeća
na primjeru kazališnih komada Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer Cvrčak i
Lowoodska
sirotica
.” In Kompleks
obitelji i četvrt stoljeća tranzicije i globalizacije u hrvatskoj drami i
kazalištu: dvadeset i pet godina Krležinih dana u Osijeku. Krležini dani u
Osijeku
2014, 34–44. Zagreb, Osijek: Hrvatska akademija znanosti i umjetnosti, Zavod za povijest hrvatske književnosti, kazališta i glazbe, Odsjek za povijest hrvatskog kazališta, Hrvatsko narodno kazalište, Filozofski fakultet.
