Literary historians and critics who have written on the influence of Racine in England during the neoclassical period apparently have assumed that the English translators and adapters of Racine's plays in general succeeded in presenting the real Racine to the English public. Katherine Wheatley...

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1. Verfasser:	Wheatley, Katherine E. (VerfasserIn)
Format:	Elektronisch E-Book
Sprache:	English
Veröffentlicht:	Austin University of Texas Press [2021]
Schlagworte:	LITERARY CRITICISM / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh
Online-Zugang:	FAW01 FAB01 FCO01 FHA01 FKE01 FLA01 UPA01 UBG01 Volltext
Zusammenfassung:	Literary historians and critics who have written on the influence of Racine in England during the neoclassical period apparently have assumed that the English translators and adapters of Racine's plays in general succeeded in presenting the real Racine to the English public. Katherine Wheatley here reveals the wide discrepancy between avowed intentions and actual results. Among the English plays she compares with their French originals are Otway's Titus and Berenice, Congreve's The Mourning Bride, and Philips's The Distrest Mother. These comparisons, fully supported by "ed passages, reveal that those among the English public and contemporary critics who could not themselves read French had no chance whatever to know the real Racine: "The adapters and translators, so-called, had eliminated Racine from his tragedies before presenting them to the public." Unacknowledged excisions and additions, shifts in plot, changes in dénouement, and frequent mistranslation turned Racine's plays into "wretched travesties." Two translations of Britannicus, intended for reading rather than for acting, are especially revealing in that they show which Racinian qualities eluded the British translators even when they were not trying to please an English theatergoing audience. Why it is, asks the author, that no English dramatist could or would present Racine as he is to the English public of the neoclassical period? To answer this question she traces the development of Aristotelian formalism in England, showing the relation of the English theory of tragedy to French classical doctrine and the relation of the English adaptations of Racine to the English neoclassical theory of tragedy.
Beschreibung:	Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 27. Okt 2021)
Beschreibung:	1 online resource
ISBN:	9781477307014
DOI:	10.7560/733442