On archaism in literary translation: Guilherme de Almeida e Mário Faustino versions of François Villon’s ballads

Abstract

Archaism is used by translators to mark, basically, two types of literary work: the classical and the archaistic. The use of archaism by the translators of the first type allows them to point out the antiquity of works that belong to the canon of a literary tradition and the translators of the second type to reproduce a literary procedure deliberately used by the author himself. Based on these two usages of archaism, it is compared the translations into Portuguese (by the Brazilian poets Guilherme de Almeida and Mário Faustino) of two ballads by François Villon (respectively, Ballade of Dead Ladies and Ballade of Dead Priests) which approach the biblical topos ubi sunt?

Keywords

• arcaísmo. poesia medieval francesa. tradução poética. guilherme de almeida. mário faustino.