Reception and translation: Heinrich von Kleist's 'Der zerbrochne Krug' in English translations (German text).

摘要

This dissertation examines the translational reception of Heinrich von Kleist's comedy Der zerbrochne Krug. Within the framework of historical-philological translation studies, my thesis explores Kleist's reception in English-speaking countries. The corpus of the translations is diverse, comprising fourteen English translations of the play (among them reading texts, theater texts, and a radio play), three countries of origin (the US, Great Britain, and Ireland), and different types of translators, scholar-translators, poet-translators, including mediators like Eric Bentley, John Banville, and Blake Morrison. My aim is to explore and to describe translations as specific interpretations of a source text guided by linguistic, literary, and cultural factors.; Part I highlights the debate on literary translation and surveys Kleist's reception through translations. Chapter 1 sketches recent developments in translation research, showing an increasing scrutiny of the concepts “equivalence” or “adequacy” traditionally postulated by source-text oriented and prescriptive translation criticism, and revealing the growing interest in descriptive and transfer-oriented approaches. Chapter 2 delineates the history of English Kleist translations, drawing on my complete bibliography of the English translations of his works (Appendix), which establishes Der zerbrochne Krug as the most frequently translated work in recent years. Chapter 3 observes the major trends in the variegated literary criticism of this play, with its emphases on either its comic aspects or its underlying tragic potential.; Part II focuses on a comparative textual analysis of the translations by charting the deviations between source and target texts with regard to style and character presentation. Following the translations in chronological order, the essays discuss and illustrate translation shifts and their consequences, examine dependencies between the translations, and ascertain the reception of the translations through book and theater reviews. What emerges is a fascinating plurality of approaches: from stylistically simplified burlesques to a linguistically complex masterpiece with Shakespearean accents, from Brechtian satire on power over grotesque comedy to a linguistic document of modern alienation. The conclusion summarizes the major translational trends from the play's first translation in 1937 until today, and connects them to the play's overall reception history.