Abstract
This article considers translations of African texts from English to French in the context
of recent conceptualizations of world literature as a critical approach. Translation is a
key mechanism, dynamic and metaphor in world literature. However, its idealized connotations
should not distract from the material realities of a process governed by uneven
structures of production and reception. Two cases are illustrative: Amos Tutuola’s L’Ivrogne
dans la brousse (The Palm-Wine Drinkard) (trans. Raymond Queneau 1953; 1952)
and Chinua Achebe’s Le Monde s’effondre (Things Fall Apart) (trans. Michel Ligny
1966; 1958) published respectively by Gallimard and Présence Africaine. The rapturous
mainstream reception of Raymond Queneau’s stylistic appropriation of Tutuola is here
contrasted with the subdued reception of Achebe’s text in France in the late 1960s. The
translators’ spectral presence in text and paratext is key to understanding the position of
the translated texts in relation to the aesthetic, political and commercial stakes of their
publishing contexts. Colonial and postcolonial book history thus confirms the material
instability and relationality of any totalizing model of a world literary system and the
methodological limits of a singular abstract concept of world literary time or space.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 512 |
Number of pages | 525 |
Journal | Journal of Postcolonial Writing |
Volume | 48 |
Issue number | 5 |
Publication status | Published - Dec 2012 |