Between Translation and Reception: Reading and Writing Forward and Backward in Translations of Epic

Hardwick, Lorna (2025). Between Translation and Reception: Reading and Writing Forward and Backward in Translations of Epic. In: Armstrong, Richard H. and Lianeri, Alexandra eds. A Companion to the Translation of Classical Epic. Wiley, pp. 36–51.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/9781119094180.ch4

Abstract

This chapter explores how key features of translations of classical epic challenge paradigms in the study of translation and of receptions of epic. It focuses on the interaction between the aesthetics of epic performance poetry, the formal poetics embedded in translations of Homer and Virgil (with a few allusions to other significant examples), and the contexts of reception (temporal, spatial, and linguistic). Thus, in exploring how translations operate at the nexus between aesthetic and historical frameworks, the chapter challenges unsustainable polarities between models of reception and translation that are based on a division between aesthetic and historicist approaches. It maps ways in which both aspects are energized by their interaction and in their turn provoke further translational receptions. Concentrating on how the relationship between translation and epic poetry embodies and invoices the “writing backward” and “writing forward” in translations of epic poetry that is the main theme of the chapter.

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