Gallivanting Round the Globe: Translating National Identities in Henry V

Vicent Montalt Resurrección,Miguel Teruel Pozas,Pilar Ezpeleta Piorno

doi:10.14198/raei.2012.25.09

Abstract

In this article we shall be looking at the character of MacMorris in Henry V, and at his small but important role in the four captains’ scene. We shall explore some of the historical, cultural, political, dramaturgical and linguistic complexities of his portrayal of Irishness as a necessary preliminary study to its translation into other languages, both for the printed page and for the stage. Spanish and Catalan translations of the scene will be briefly analysed in what we hope will be the framework of a wider, multilingual preoccupation: how does national identity translate in a global context? How does —or can— MacMorris speak in other languages?

Highlights

The episode can be viewed in a different light if we look at a likely source in Holinshed” (2003b: 49)
C) The third level is occupied by the four captains, who are placed neither in the context of the palace nor the tavern, but in the battlefield, directly involved in military action. It is in this third space that we identify the national and ideological conflicts these four characters bring about
In the four captains’ scene, Shakespeare exploits phonetic traits and dialectal expressions as well as lexical anomalies, and creates a hybrid text/scene in which “superior” English interacts with other accents, and in which the asymmetrical relations and tensions between the cultures involved are shown

Summary

Introduction

Though so much later, the wandering Bloom replied, "Ireland," said Bloom, “I was born here. In the Cyclops episode of the novel, at Barney Kiernan’s pub, Bloom is confronted by The Citizen, a one-eyed Irish bigot who denies his Irishness. His dignified retort is used by Heaney in his poem to open the way for the possibility and the potency of another tradition, that of Irish writers writing in English without and beyond the literature of England, and forging in the process a new national conscience of belonging in an independent culture

Henry V’s Englishness

The four captains’ scene in translation

Discussion and conclusions