The short story in English meets the Portuguese reader

Abstract

This paper aims to research how intercultural exchanges contributed for the development of the short story in Portugal, notably to consider interference especially by English-language literary systems through the indirect channel of translation. For this purpose, it focuses on the external history of the translation into Portuguese of the short story in English, taking its publication in anthologies as a form of creative rewriting, adaptation or manipulation, as André Lefevere put it. The purpose of this paper is twofold: firstly, it provides answers to questions such as whose and which short stories, when, where, by whom, why and how short stories in English were selected, translated and presented to the Portuguese reader. The cartography of such a territory is based on the presentation and analysis of a selection of data (available at the Portuguese National Library archives) regarding the introduction of the short story in English through translations published in anthologies. Secondly, resorting to Gérard Genette’s definition of peritext, i.e. paratextual elements pertaining to the book, this paper analyses the role played by peritextual discourses in a selection of anthologies. This analysis is expected to yield insights into how such anthologies introduced the short story in English to a public reading it in Portuguese version.