Translating the American West into English: The Case of Hendrik Conscience's Het Goudland.
This essay analyzes the US adaptations of Het Goudland (1862), an adventure novel about the California Gold Rush by the Flemish writer Hendrik Conscience (1812-1883). Contrary to other European writers of Western romances, Conscience refrained from romanticizing the West. Rather, he approached the h...
| Publicado en: | Western American Literature Vol. 47; no. 1; pp. 22 - 45 |
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| Autores principales: | , |
| Formato: | Literary Criticism |
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Western Literature Association
Spring2012
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| Acceso en línea: | Ver este registro en EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=77251396&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 77251396 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00433462 2G9 jtl: Western American Literature issn: 00433462 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Spring2012 vid: 47 iid: 1 pid: 50956 pub: Western Literature Association artinfo: ui: 77251396 10.1353/wal.2012.0013 ppf: 22 ppct: 23 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 541KB tig: atl: Translating the American West into English: The Case of Hendrik Conscience's Het Goudland. aug: au: Boyden, Michael Vandenbussche, Liselotte affil: Board member of the European Society for Translation Studies and a consultant of the Red Star Line Museum of the city of Antwerp Assistant professor of Dutch at Ghent University College su: Het Goudland (Book) Boys of the Sierras, The (Book) Off to California (Book) Conscience, Hendrik, 1812-1883 California Gold Rush, 1848-1852 sug: subj: Het Goudland (Book) Boys of the Sierras, The (Book) Off to California (Book) Conscience, Hendrik, 1812-1883 California Gold Rush, 1848-1852 ab: This essay analyzes the US adaptations of Het Goudland (1862), an adventure novel about the California Gold Rush by the Flemish writer Hendrik Conscience (1812-1883). Contrary to other European writers of Western romances, Conscience refrained from romanticizing the West. Rather, he approached the hunt for gold as a symptom of moral decay in Belgian society at a time of intense social change. During the early 1880s, Het Goudland was adapted for an American audience in two English translations, The Boys of the Sierras (1883) and Off to California (1884). The translational changes reveal how the work was refunctionalized to fit into an emergent monolingualized vision of the West as a site of American self-realization. We argue that Conscience's novel was submitted to a threefold domesticating strategy to adjust its depiction of California and its inhabitants to an increasingly dominant Anglo-Protestant vision of the frontier: (1) the multilingualism of the original was flattened out; (2) Conscience's very negative portrayal of the West as a lawless nonplace was neutralized; and (3) the Roman-Catholic framework of the book was downplayed even while its eschatological dimension received added emphasis. Thus, the essay demonstrates that the American West as a cultural space was made not only within the borders of what is now the United States, but that this cultural construction depended in part on a selective engagement with international and multilingual traditions. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Literary Criticism src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Western American Literature is the property of Western Literature Association 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: Western American Literature holder: Western Literature Association dt: @attributes: year: 2012 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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