Translation as work of art: Antoine Berman's reading of the romantic concept of work of art and his reflections on translation

• Grant number: 12/20288-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: March 15, 2013
• End date: March 14, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Literature - Literature Theory
• Principal Investigator: Marcos Antonio Siscar
• Grantee: Simone Christina Petry
• Supervisor: Jacob Rogozinski
• Host Institution: Instituto de Estudos da Linguagem (IEL). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Université de Strasbourg, France
• Associated to the scholarship: 12/04512-3 - Translation as work of art: Antoine Berman's reading of the romantic concept of work of art and his reflections on translation, BP.DR

Abstract

The overall objective of this study is to investigate the notion of translation as a work of art, pursuant to the terms in which this notion is developed in the context of Antoine Berman's reflections, emphasizing the discussion of its critical and theoretical assumptions - as a manifestation of a particular view of the literary criticism and the work of art in the context of the German Romanticism. Such an investigation will allow us to discuss its implications for both a redefinition of the notion of autonomy in literary translation and its status as criticism, and also to the reconsideration of the place of translation and its relations to literary criticism, history and theory. Thus, the corpus of this work is composed by the set of critical and theoretical texts published by Berman, including also his posthumous publications, with special emphasis on the Lettres Fouad El-Etr sur le romanticism allemande (1968), L'épreuve de l'étranger: culture et traduction dans l'Allemagne romantique(1984) and Pour une critique de Traductions: John Donne (1995), keeping in view the fact that in these three texts the French theorist develops more centrally his ideas on the notion of translation as a work of art, especially motivated by the need for a new way of understanding translation as a practice or, more specifically, in the words of the author, as a "faire oeuvre-en-correspondence." Through this movement, we will investigate the impact of Berman's reflections on the construction of a contemporary understanding of translation, while also seeking to explain how this construction is a tribute to his particular way of reading the Romantic referential. In doing so, we believe we are bringing together the Bermanian reflections and the contemporary issues that are also candent in literary criticism, history and theory, especially insofar as they are tributary to interpretations of the same Romantic referential. (AU)