The Poetry of Translation
A very wide-ranging book which launches a new theory of poetry translation and pursues it through readings of poem-translations from across the history of English literature. It engages with the key debates in translation studies, and offers new interpretations of major works such as Pope's Iliad, Pound's Cathay, and Dryden's Aeneis.
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Poetry is supposed to be untranslatable. But many poems in English are also translations: Pope's Iliad, Pound's Cathay, and Dryden's Aeneis. The Poetry of Translation explodes this paradox, launching a new theoretical approach to translation, and developing it through readings of English poem-translations, both major and neglected, from Chaucer and Petrarch to Homer and Logue.The word 'translation' includes within itself a picture: of something being carried across. This image gives a misleading idea of goes on in any translation; and poets have been quick to dislodge it with other metaphors. Poetry translation can be a process of opening; of pursuing desire, or succumbing to passion; of taking a view, or zooming in; of dying, metamorphosing, or bringing to life, but where do these metaphors originate? The Poetry of Translation puts the translation of poetry back at the heart of English literature, allowing the many great poem-translations to be read anew.
