Critical edition and annotated translation of Louis-Ferdinand Céline's medieval legend La Volonté du Roi Krogold

• Grant number: 24/10012-0
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: December 01, 2024
• End date: November 30, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Linguistics, Literature and Arts - Linguistics - Applied Linguistics
• Principal Investigator: Pablo Simpson Kilzer Amorim
• Grantee: Amanda Fievet Marques
• Host Institution: Instituto de Biociências, Letras e Ciências Exatas (IBILCE). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de São José do Rio Preto. São José do Rio Preto , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This postdoctoral project aims to translate Louis-Ferdinand Céline's rediscovered manuscript, La Volonté du Roi Krogold (1939/40), which creates a medieval legend. Published by Gallimard in April 2023, the manuscript allows for a broader understanding of the constitution of Céline's literary work and style. The translation project, from French to Portuguese, seeks to incorporate the concept of plurivocalism (Henri Godard, 1985), which recognizes and preserves the style, multiple voices and registers present in the original text. To carry out the translation, morphosyntactic characteristics of archaic Portuguese will be incorporated, collected from manuscripts from the 13th to the 16th century, such as the Testament of Afonso II (1214), Lives of Saints from an Alcobacense Manuscript (XIII/XIV), The Customs of Santarém (1340- 60), Quest for the Holy Grail (XV), and Chronicle of the Kings of Bisnaga (XVI). The medieval legend written by Céline is rich in linguistic variants, including different registers of French (Old French, Medieval, Anglo-Norman, colloquial), rhythms, characters, intertextual references that reflect the cultural and historical complexity of the medieval period, and the text itself. Plurivocal translation will allow one to capture these nuances and variations. The stylistic approach (Leo Spitzer, 1970) will be used for a thorough analysis of the source text, identifying the different voices and stylistic procedures present. The aim is to recreate and find appropriate equivalents in Portuguese that reflect the diversity of Céline's French, maintaining its "letter" (Antoine Berman, 1991). Additionally, footnotes will be provided to explain the linguistic choices.