Reading, Translating, Rewriting: Angela Carter's Translational Poetics

Abstract

There is an extensive body of critical work on Angela Carter but her translations are rarely considered as part of her creative output, although the act of linguistic and cultural translation was central to Carter’s approach. This is a complex book using complex material: It analyses Carter’s English translation of Charles Perrault’s and Mme de Beaumont’s French fairy tales in The Fairy Tales of Charles Perrault (1977) and her rewriting of classic fairy tales in The Bloody Chamber (1979). Hennard Dutheil de la Rochere’s aim is to demonstrate that Carter’s work as a translator not only fundamentally shaped her understanding of the creative interplay of reading and writing but also to demonstrate the connections and mutually reinforcing creative processes between writing, rewriting and translating in Carter’s output. She bases this on Carter’s intertextual understanding of the interconnectedness of literature, culture and the world on the one hand and the production of meaning as a process of translation engaged in by reader and writer.