"Clothed with Poetry": Lafcadio Hearn's Decadent Aesthetics of Translation.
In Europe, the late nineteenth century was marked by an explosion of interest in Japanese arts and culture known as japonisme. While japonisme flourished, however, translations of Japanese literature remained extremely limited. This article explores the contribution of Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) to...
| Published in: | Modern Philology Vol. 121; no. 1; pp. 104 - 124 |
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| Format: | Literary Criticism |
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University of Chicago Press
Aug2023
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=165048479&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 165048479 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00268232 MPH jtl: Modern Philology issn: 00268232 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Aug2023 vid: 121 iid: 1 pid: 415 pub: University of Chicago Press artinfo: ui: 165048479 10.1086/725415 ppf: 104 ppct: 20 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 139KB tig: atl: "Clothed with Poetry": Lafcadio Hearn's Decadent Aesthetics of Translation. aug: au: Evangelista, Stefano affil: Trinity College, Oxford University su: Translations of Japanese literature Hearn, Lafcadio, 1850-1904 Shadowing (Book) 19th century (Literary period) sug: subj: Translations of Japanese literature Hearn, Lafcadio, 1850-1904 Shadowing (Book) 19th century (Literary period) ab: In Europe, the late nineteenth century was marked by an explosion of interest in Japanese arts and culture known as japonisme. While japonisme flourished, however, translations of Japanese literature remained extremely limited. This article explores the contribution of Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904) to the diffusion of Japanese literature in translation, arguing that his works represent a pioneering effort to circulate Japanese literature internationally through the framework of decadence. Focusing in particular on the collection Shadowings (1900), the article suggests that Hearn's Japanese essays and stories drew on ideas and literary techniques associated with decadent literature in the West and fed, in their turn, a decadent fascination with the exotic, the uncanny, and the relationship between literature and the visual arts. In Shadowings , Hearn suggestively presented translation as an art of shadows, a metaphor that interacted with the theme of the Japanese uncanny while looking back to Théophile Gautier's definition of decadent aesthetics. Hearn made a highly creative use of translation by mixing different translational forms, ranging from the transliteration of isolated words to entire versions of Japanese source texts. His writings also frequently dramatized encounters with translation in order to present translation as an embodied and collaborative practice involving a network of social relations. In this process, translation shaped not only his cultural and social interactions with Japan but also his self-knowledge as cultural mediator. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Literary Criticism src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Modern Philology is the property of University of Chicago Press and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Modern Philology holder: University of Chicago Press dt: @attributes: year: 2023 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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