Cambridge Scholars Publishing Translation, the Canon and its Discontents: Version and Subversion

This collection addresses the complex process by which translation and other forms of rewriting have contributed to canon formation, revision, destabilization, and dismantlement. Through the play between version and subversion, which is inherent to any form of rewriting, these essays – focusing on translations since the sixteenth century down to the present day – stress the role of translation and adaptation as potentially transformative mediations, capable of shaping and undermining identities. Such manipulation is deeply ambivalent, since it can be used as a means of disseminating the ideology of oppressive regimes at the expense of the source text; but it can also serve to garner attention to marginalised texts. This tense interplay between political, social, and aesthetic purposes almost inevitably generates discontents, which may turn out to be the outcome of translation in general. However, discontent is a relational concept, depending on where one stands in the field of competing positions that is the canon. About the Author Miguel Ramalhete Gomes is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working on the theme of Shakespeare and presentism. He is the author of Texts Waiting for History: William Shakespeare Re-Imagined by Heiner Müller (2014) and the co-editor, with Márcia Lemos, of Exchanges between Literature and Science from the 1800s to the 2000s: Converging Realms (2017). Currently based at the Centre for English, Translation, and Anglo-Portuguese Studies (CETAPS), at the University of Porto, Portugal, he teaches at the Polytechnic Institute of Porto. His research interests include Early Modern drama, Irish studies, and utopian studies.