Milton in Translation - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0198754825 ISBN 13: 9780198754824

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2017

Synopsis

Milton in Translation represents an unprecedented collaboration that demonstrates the breadth of John Milton's international reception, from the seventeenth century through today. This book collects in one volume new essays written on the translation of Milton's works written by an international roster of experts: stalwart and career-long Miltonists, scholars primarily of translation studies, and practitioners who have translated Milton's works. Chapters are grouped geographically but also, by and large, chronologically, given that Milton's works radiated further abroad over time. The chapters on the twenty-three individual languages showcased in this volume are framed by 'Part I: Approaches', consisting of an introduction and two major essays on the global reach and the aural nature of Milton's poetry, and by an epilogue. 'Part II: Influential Translations' features the most influential languages in translations of Milton's works (English, Latin, German, French). Then, accounts of Milton's afterlives in specific languages are provided in 'Part III. Western European and Latin American Translations' (Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Icelandic, Italian, Portuguese, European Spanish, Latin American Spanish), 'Part IV: Central and Eastern European Translations' (Bulgarian, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Serbian/Montenegrin, Serbo-Croatian languages), 'Part V: Middle Eastern Translations' (Arabic, Hebrew, Persian), and 'Part VI: East Asian Translations' (Chinese, Japanese, Korean). The chapters in Parts II through VI include historical and critical context, a brief history of translation in the language, and a case study on any single work or group of Milton's works in translation.

About this title

About the Author

Angelica Duran, Purdue University, Islam Issa, Birmingham City University, Jonathan R. Olson, University of Liverpool

Angelica Duran is Professor at Purdue University, where she has been on the English and Comparative Literature faculties since earning her PhD in English Literature from Stanford in 2000. She served as Purdue's Director of Religious Studies from 2009 to 2013. Her monographs, edited and co-edited volumes, journal articles, and scholarly chapters are anchored in early modern English literature and range from Anglo-Hispanic Comparative Literature to Disability Studies. She is on the Executive Committee (2012-21) of the Milton Society of America and the editorial board of Milton Quarterly.

Islam Issa is Lecturer in English Literature at Birmingham City University. He has published on the reception of Milton in the Arab world, including an award-winning census of Arabic translations of Milton. He has a practical understanding of translation, having worked as a simultaneous interpreter of Arabic to English, interpreting for a range of high-profile figures. In 2009, he was a Research Consultant for the BBC's Poetry Season documentary about Milton, providing insight into Islamic responses to Paradise Lost. His book, Milton in the Arab-Muslim World, is the first full-length study of Milton in the region, and he is also translating and editing the first Arabic edition of Milton's sonnets.

Jonathan R. Olson is an Honorary Fellow in the Department of English at the University of Liverpool. His research focuses on early modern English literature, book history, and cinema. He has taught literature and film as Leverhulme Early Career Fellow at Liverpool and as Visiting Assistant Professor at Biola University, and held a Mellon Visiting Research Fellowship at the University of Warwick and the Newberry Library. He has held bibliographical fellowships at the Beinecke, Clark, Houghton, and Huntington Libraries for research on his current book project, Selling an English Canon: Literary Publishing, 1640-1710. He contributed a chapter to The Cinema of Christopher Nolan (2015).

Review

Winner of the Milton Society of America's Irene Samuel Memorial Award (2017)

"[Milton in Translation] is important for bringing to notice the existence of over 300 translations of Milton into fifty-seven languages, and the fact that there have been more such translations in the last thirty years than the preceding 300. It is fascinating to read, across a number of essays, of Milton's appropriation as a revolutionary in, for example, the Protestant colonies of North America (Thomas N. Corns), the Catholic colonies of postindependence Latin America (Mario Murgia), and in both Maoist and contemporary China (Bing Yan)." -- Catherine Bates, Studies in English Literature

"What Angelica Duran, Islam Issa, and Jonathan R. Olson have put together for Milton in Translation proves that translation continues to serve an important role in the interpretation of literature. Duran, Issa, and Olson also make an important contribution to Milton studies, despite the exhaustive corpus of literary studies devoted to John Milton's work ... Overall, the editors and contributors provide an engaging look at Milton studies through translation studies and a text that will appeal to scholars and students in both areas." --William John Silverman Jr., Renaissance Quarterly

"The volume creates an impressive panopticon of the diversity of target-language-specific reformulations of Milton's epic vision ... this [is a] marvelous, insightful, and truly pioneering volume." --Anne-Julia Zwierlein, Milton Quarterly

"[Milton] would have approved of Milton in Translation...In total, twenty-three languages are represented in this fascinating volume, including Chinese, Korean, Bulgarian, Czech, Serbo-Croatian and the Finno-Ugric languages." -- Neil Forsyth, Times Literary Supplement

"Fifty years ago, William Riley Parker opined that 'A good book on the translating of Milton into other languages (and his influence on other literatures) is long overdue.' Here is that book, appearing close to the 350th anniversary of the first appearance of Paradise Lost." -- John Hale, Translation and Literature

"Milton in Translation (2017) offers an expansive and novel study of the global reach of John Milton through translations into twenty-three languages, bringing together a wealth of knowledge by a wide variety of specialists in their respective fields. Ranging from western Europe to Asia and the Americas, the volume strives to be as inclusive as possible. Given the rising interest in the combined approach of translation and literary studies, this volume demonstrates the potential fruitfulness of such research in both a historical and a more contemporary context." -- Rena Bood, H-Nationalism

"This is an important collection of essays on the wide range of translations that have been made of Milton's works, encompassing several centuries of publication ... The sheer number of translations that the collection manages to catalogue is breathtaking, ranging over the major European languages, through Latin and Hebrew, as well as noting cultural reception from South America to Asia ... one can imagine Milton would have approved of the demonstration of this global engagement with his work." -- Esther van Raamsdonk, The Modern Language Review

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0198754825
• ISBN 13: 9780198754824
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 534
• Editor: Duran Angelica, Issa Islam, Olson Jonathan R.