Translation, Authorship and the Victorian Professional Woman

Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Martineau and George Eliot

by Lesa Scholl, The University of Queensland, Australia.

In her study of Charlotte Brontë, Harriet Martineau and George Eliot, Lesa Scholl shows how three Victorian women writers broadened their capacity for literary professionalism by participating in translation and other conventionally derivative activities such as editing and reviewing early in their careers. In the nineteenth century, a move away from translating Greek and Latin Classical texts in favour of radical French and German philosophical works took place. As England colonised the globe, Continental philosophies penetrated English shores, causing fissures of faith, understanding and cultural stability. The influence of these new texts in England was unprecedented, and Eliot, Brontë and Martineau were instrumental in both literally and figuratively translating these ideas for their English audience. Each was transformed by access to foreign languages and cultures, first through the written word and then by travel to foreign locales, and the effects of this exposure manifest in their journalism, travel writing and fiction. Ultimately, Scholl argues, their study of foreign languages and their translation of foreign-language texts, nations and cultures enabled them to transgress the physical and ideological boundaries imposed by English middle-class conventions.

Contents: Introduction: myths of translation; Part 1 Learning the Language of Transgression: Masters at home; Masters abroad. Part 2 Beyond Translation: The business of writing; Translator, editor, reviewer; Strong-minded political journalism. Part 3 Vacating the Hearth: Travel writing and cultural translation; Sustaining and rewriting cultural values; Conclusion: colonising the text; Bibliography; Index.

About the Author: Lesa Scholl is Dean of Academic Studies at Emmanuel College within the University of Queensland, Australia.

This title is also available as an ebook, ISBN 978-1-4094-2654-7

To access extracts from this book please visit:

http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409426530

Published by Ashgate, September 2011