Genres of Translation

3.0 credits · Graduate

The recent prominence of “translation studies” as a field of inquiry has brought to the fore the way the issues of translation touch both directly and obliquely on a number of key questions in contemporary literary studies and theory: the nature of linguistic meaning and hermeneutic practices, the problems and prospects of a world literature, the mechanics of historical transmission and formation of literary traditions, to name just a few. This course will examine the theory and (to a lesser extent) practice of translation, with readings of theoretical and literary texts ranging from the ancient to the contemporary. Note that though it may come in handy, fluency in a foreign language is not required to take this course.