La reconstruction d’un univers merveilleux

Abstract

Reconstructing a Marvelous World: On the Translation of Angela Carter’s Metaphors into French and Italian This essay sets out to analyze the re-construction of a marvelous world in the translations of Angela Carter’s works (1940-1992). It does so by focusing on metaphors, seen as cognitive and stylistic elements which are both relevant in the construction of such world, and emblematic of the overall translation strategy. Our parallel corpus consists of a selection of stories from Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber and other stories (1979) and their three translations (two into Italian, one into French). The stories in this collection offer a profound rewriting of Perrault’s tales and subvert the canon by adding an explicit sexual dimension to these stories and questioning male supremacy. We shall illustrate the strategies implemented by the Italian and French translators to recreate the uncanny images and associations that deliberate metaphors can trigger in the minds of their readers. We aim at drawing a few tentative conclusions about the construction of marvelous through metaphors, as well as on the translation approaches to such elements and works.

Keywords

• metaphor
• translation
• Carter Angela
• marvelous