Fabre d’Olivet’s Le Troubadour and the Textuality of Pseudotranslation

Abstract

Le Troubadour, poesies occitaniques du XIII e siecle [the troubadour, Occitanic poems of the thirteenth century] (1803–4), a literary super-cherie or mystification by Antoine Fabre d’Olivet (1767–1825), offers a test case for fresh dialogue between research in translation studies on pseudotranslations and investigations within literary studies of textual and authorial authenticity in relation to literary fakes and forgeries. Recent research in forgery studies (Carpenter 2009; Russett 2006) has incorporated various methodological tools, including Lacanian psychoanalysis, post-structuralism and gender theories. It has, however, largely neglected translation theory in discussions of those inauthentic texts that employ the conceit of fictional translation. Similarly, whilst recent Anglophone work on pseudotranslations (Apter 2005; Rizzi 2008) has considerably advanced Anton Popovic and Gideon Toury’s fundamental work of the 1970s onwards, there is scope for further examination of the concrete historical and social determinants of such texts, their literary status and the possible motivations of pseudotranslators. Researchers of pseudotranslations and literary mystifications often discuss the same texts: it makes sense to identify areas for fruitful communication across the disciplines.