On Not Being an Author: De Quincey's ‘Confessions’ and the Performance of Romantic Translatorship

Abstract

Through his ‘Confessions of an English Opium-Eater’, Thomas De Quincey effects a meticulously crafted entrance onto the literary scene: less a series of confidential notes than a stage-managed performance, the ‘Confessions’ serve as a stage on which he announces his literary ambitions. One such set of performative acts has received little attention: it pertains less to establishing a ground from which to authoritatively create, than it does to laying down a structure through which to mediate. Acting on recent developments within literary criticism and translation studies, this article examines the ways in which the ‘Confessions’ launch their writer on a career in interlingual and intercultural transfer, and how this performance of minority is designed to operate alongside other Romantic writers. The article ponders the successes and failures of mediation on display in emblematic scenes, and attends to how these chart the uneasy relationship between authorship and translatorship.