This study of four major poets - Mallarme, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and Holderlin - examines the self-reflexivity of modern poetry, exploring questions concerning what it means for a poem to be "about" its own process of saying. What does it mean to read and understand a text that is focused not on its content but on its saying? What kind of relation does a writer have to the language used in a text? How are we to think about the relation of content to the saying? In the chapter on Mallarme, the author uses several close readings to investigate the referentiality of literature in general and the concept of "undecidability" in Mallarme. For example, in "A la nue accablante tu" he shows the way undecidability operates in syntax, metaphorics, sounds, and plays on individual letters of the alphabet. The chapter on Rimbaud explores the significance of the poet's famous statement "JE est un autre" ("I is an other"), leading to a meditation on the question of the control of the author, the relationship between saying and that which is said, the way in which language overwhelms the speaker. In the Baudelaire chapter, the author analyzes the themes of memory and imagination in Baudelaire's writings on painting and Victor Hugo, showing how these themes reveal the writer's thoughts on artistic conception and execution. The author then reads Holderlin's hymn "Der Rhein" with the fifth of Rousseau's "Reveries du promeneur solitaire," showing how in Holderlin's poem and other texts the crucial issue is a paradoxical relationship between lack and fullness or perfection. The final Holderlin chapter presents a sustained critique of Heidegger's exegesis of Holderlin, opening new avenues in the discussions of both Holderlin and Heidegger.

Translating Poetic Discourse argues in favor of a critical model that bridges between translation and women’s studies on theoretical and practical levels. It proposes key-elements to be integrated into the problem of interpretation of contemporary poetry by women, and discusses the links between gender markers and the speech situation in feminist discourse as a systematic problem. This book will be of interest to scholars of Translation Studies, Women’s Studies, Poetry, Comparative Literature and Discourse.

"Discourse and Literature "boldly integrates the analysis of literature and non-literary genres in an innovative embracing study of discourse. Narrative, poetry, drama, myths, songs, letters, Biblical discourse and graffiti as well as stylistics and rhetorics are the topics treaded by twelve well-known specialists selected and introduced by Teun A. van Dijk.

Publisher Description

In this book one of the old traditions of translation studies is revived: the tradition of the comparative study of translation and original. The aim of the author is to develop an armamentarium, a set of analytical instruments and a procedure, for the systematic study of poetic discourse in translation. The armamentarium provides the means to describe the ‘translational interpretation’, that is: the interpretation of the original as it emerges from the translation and may be constructed in the course of a comparison between the two texts. The practical result of this study is based on a solid theoretical foundation. This study most of all reflects on the possibilities of translation comparison and description per se. It is one of the few books in which an in-depth study is undertaken into the principles of translation comparison itself, into its limits and possibilities, and into its central concepts (‘shift’, ‘unit of comparison’ etcetera). Before presenting his own proposal for a comparative procedure, the author critically evaluates several existing methods, particularly those of Toury, Van Leuven-Zwart and the German transfer-oriented approach. The theoretical considerations in this book are amply illustrated by analyses of translated works of poets as Rutger Kopland and Robert Lowell. The book also contains an extensive case study into the translations, by the German poet Paul Celan, of a selection of William Shakespeare’s sonnets.

"Translating Poetic Discourse" argues in favor of a critical model that bridges between translation and women's studies on theoretical and practical levels. It proposes key-elements to be integrated into the problem of interpretation of contemporary poetry by women, and discusses the links between gender markers and the speech situation in feminist discourse as a systematic problem. This book will be of interest to scholars of Translation Studies, Women's Studies, Poetry, Comparative Literature and Discourse.