Literature, Theory, and After

Abstract

During the 1960s a move from commentary and New Criticism through structuralism to poststructuralism occurred in the English-speaking world, and this would not have been possible without those theorists working in Paris. The question of the translation of study and language relates to the translation of texts from language to language. English and French have a long relation, their interplay going back about a 1,000 years, and translation between the two languages is of great importance. At one time, I studied the French and English uses of the example of Spain, their translation of Spanish texts, and translation those languages French and English in the representation of the New World from 1492 to 1713.1 The 1960s and the decades that followed became important for the translation of French texts in literary theory into English. Sometimes significant texts are not translated or are slow to be translated. The texts I begin with were available only in French when I wrote, so part of my task was to “translate” them into the English-speaking sphere through a discussion of the texts and not by direct translation of the texts into English versions.