British Decadence and Translation: A Symposium

Trinity College, Oxford

2 November 2018

This one-day symposium was the first of four events hosted by the AHRC-funded ‘Decadence and Translation Network’. The day had a twofold aim:

• to explore specific case studies of how British Decadent writers engaged with translation at the Victorian fin de siècle;
• to discuss, more broadly, how theories and practices of translation inform our cultural and stylistic understanding of the concept of Decadence.

To address these, we arranged four sessions:

Session 1 – Plenary Paper

Clive Scott (UEA, Emeritus) – ‘The Suffusive and the Prosodic in the Translations of the Decadent Poets’; respondent: Jennifer Higgins

Session 2 – Current Work on Decadence & Translation

Moderated by Matthew Creasy.

• Professor Jane Desmarais (Goldsmiths) – ‘Decadence and translation across the arts: Beardsley, Symons and Dowson’
• Katherina Herold (Oxford) – ‘Stefan George’s translations of English Decadent poetry Rossetti, Swinburne, Dowson’
• Maria Del Pilar Blanco (Trinity College, Oxford)– ‘Latin Americans in Paris, or the Translation of Foreignness in the Age of Decadence’

Session 3 – Plenary Paper

Anne Jamison (University of Utah) – ‘Michael Field and Verlaine’

Professor Jamison’s paper was introduced by Ana Vadillo Parejo (Birkbeck College) and Richard Hibbitt (University of Leeds) acted as a respondent.

Session 4 – Decadence and Translation in Theory

Moderated by Stefano Evangelista

Three key speakers led discussion by introducing pre-circulated texts on theoretical topics

• Matthew Reynolds (St Annes, Oxford) discussed Naoki Sakai, ‘Writing for Multiple Audiences and the Heterolingual Address’
• Guy Ducrey (Strasbourg) discussed Jean de Palacio, «Enseigner la décadence ? Une interview» and Marie-France David, Antiquité latine et Décadence
• Juliette Taylor-Batty (Leeds Trinity University) discussed Laurence Venuti, ‘The Scandal of Translation’

For more detailed account of the day’s proceedings, see the blogpost by Katherina Herold. We are very grateful to Trinity College, Oxford for hosting this event.

Image Credit: Aubrey Beardsley, illustration to Oscar Wilde, Salome (1912) -@ University of Glasgow Library 2018