Literary Migrations

Translation and Adaptation in the Eighteenth Century

Series Editors: Jacqueline M Labbe, Katherine Astbury and Kari Lokke

The current speculation regarding the role of the immigrant in British society tends to mask the historical nature of the debate surrounding the ramifications of both immigration and emigration. This series focuses on the period in British and European literary history when the migration of ideas became common thorough the medium of literary translations.

The eighteenth century was a period of political and geographical expansion on a new scale. It facilitated a culture of consumption and of the importation/exportation of goods and fashions. Advances in both print and transportation technology meant that the dissemination of literary texts was made ever easier, while the growing popularity of the Grand Tour opened up both countries and markets for both readers and writers. This series seeks to question how translations fit into the new sense of cultural context and identity enabled by this expansion, and to explore the function of translations and translators as markers, and makers, of culture.

This series posits that ideas about national and personal identity, the value of literature, and the worth of cross-cultural exchange inform the eighteenth-century impulse to disseminate texts across borders, and encourages researchers to explore these aspects from a wide variety of critical and national perspectives. It seeks studies that focus not only on texts translated into English, but also English texts translated into a variety of European languages.

Monographs are sought that are geographically various, studying texts from a variety of national perspectives. It is the intention that authors will reflect the series’ comparative ethos, being drawn from Europe as well as Britain and other English-speaking countries. The Editors therefore encourage proposals that develop new angles and theories, approaching themes such as:

  • Gender and the market for translations
  • The growing accessibility of foreign lands
  • The increase in readerships and the development of international ‘best sellers’
  • The attraction of the foreign
  • Translations as hack work/ as works of art
  • Plagiarism and unauthorized adaptations
  • The tension between a national literary identity and imports

Interested authors should in the first instance submit a proposal of 8-10 pages, including a general précis of the book and detailed chapter breakdowns. The Editors will invite submissions of full manuscripts based on the quality and completeness of the proposals.

Readership

This series will appeal to scholars of the long eighteenth century interested in literature, history, geography, the philosophy of ideas, and modern languages. It will be aimed at researchers at all levels: the advanced undergraduate through to the university lecturer.

Editorial board

Jacqueline M Labbe is is at the University of Warwick.She has published on questions of gender, genre, and culture in the Romantic period.Her books include Charlotte Smith: Romanticism, poetry and the culture of gender (2003), The Romantic Paradox: love, violence and the uses of romance, 1760-1830 (2000) and Romantic Visualities: Landscape, gender and Romanticism (1998).She is currently editing Volume 14: Poems, of The Works of Charlotte Smith (Pickering and Chatto).

Katherine Astbury is at the University of Warwick. She has published on literary influences on short fiction in the eighteenth century, working in particular on French writers in Germany and England and German and English writers in France. Her book, The Moral Tale in France and Germany 1750-1789, was published in 2002. She is currently working on French revolutionary émigré fiction.

Kari Lokke is at the University of California. She has published on comparative literatures, women writers, and literary and cultural issues of the Romantic period.Her books include Tracing Women’s Romanticism: Gender, History and Transcendence (2004), and (ed. with Adriana Craciun) Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution (2001).

Forthcoming titles

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