A Translemic Analysis of Maria Edgeworth’s "L’Absent ou La famille irlandaise à Londres" (1814)

Abstract

After the publication of "Castle Rackrent" (1800), Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849) became one of the most famous nineteenth-century women writers in Great Britain, and her oeuvre was quickly translated on the Continent. This article analyzes the French translation of Edgeworth’s Irish tale "The Absentee" (1812) within the framework of Descriptive Translation Studies (DTS). For that purpose, both the source and the target text will be contextualized following Itamar Even-Zohar’s ideas on the literary system which is understood as a network of relations between elements depending on each other. As will be shown, the text prepared for the French-speaking readers greatly departs from the original text published in Great Britain, a fact which should be considered by any research on Edgeworth’s reception in Europe.