"Translating and Analyzing Charles Darwin and Darwinism in(to) European languages (1859-2022)":
If Charles Darwin is “perhaps the most discussed writer in English
besides Shakespeare”, in George Levine’s words, he certainly is also one
of the most debated authors in any language. Yet European readers
outside Britain ‒ whether scientists or ordinary educated people ‒ have
usually read and criticized his texts through translations into their
own languages. Now language was a terrible problem for Darwin himself as
he had to express revolutionary ideas using words that had been
employed through centuries of Creationist thought, as was brilliantly
shown by Gillian Beer in her seminal Darwin’s Plots (1983). It can be
said that Darwin’s materialistic and un-teleological concepts had to be
translated into an old Christian English language. The European
translations of Darwin’s works in turn reflect the difficulty of coining
new phrases for new ideas, but they also mirror the specificities of
each different language and culture. In France for instance, Clémence
Royer ‒ Darwin’s first French translator ‒ read The Origin of Species
through Lamarckian lenses and produced a Lamarckian translation that was
taken for Darwin’s actual views by thousands of readers for many years.
Clémence Royer's translation was also found to convey a higher degree
of certainty pertaining to the views expressed than Darwin's own
original text. Heinrich Georg Bronn translated the Origin into German in
1860 and opted for ‘Entstehung’ rather than ‘Ursprung’ for ‘origin’ and
‘Kampf’ for ‘struggle’. With his cuts and terms he paved the way for
strands of social Darwinism under the auspices of Ernst Haeckel. The
reception of Darwinism in Europe was therefore highly influenced by the
individual situation of each country in terms of translation, edition,
readership and cultural market. This seminar aims at showing the
diversity of the circulation and reception of Darwinism (Darwin himself
but also such authors as T.H. Huxley, Wallace, Spencer, or many others)
from the publication of The Origin in November 1859 to the present day
in the various European countries and cultures.
Proposals for papers in the domains of translation and comparative
studies, reception studies and linguistics are invited. Papers on
linguistic research questions applied to both the original work and the
translations of Darwin’s work are welcome; linguistic topics and
traditions which may be addressed include (but are not limited to)
modality and epistemic stance, Appraisal Theory and Systemic Functional
Linguistics, semantic relations (e.g. causality or similar semantic
relations), and metaphor theory.
We also welcome proposals that probe into textual aspects of the
discursive relation, for example reader response theory within a
Christian framework as well as an emerging atheist stance, literary
appropriations of Darwin’s work and reactions of contemporary readers in
the twenty-first century, Systemic Functional analyses of the textual
function, etc.
Submissions:
Titles and abstracts of the proposed papers for this seminar with a very short biography of their authors should be submitted directly to the convenors of the seminar:
Professor Michel Prum (Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur)
Professor Felix Sprang (Deutscher Anglistenverband)
Professor Heidi Verplaetse (Belgian Association of Anglicists in Higher Education)
prum.michel@wanadoo.fr; felix.sprang@uni-siegen.de; heidi.verplaetse@kuleuven.be
Important dates:
28 February 2022 : Extended deadline for submissions of paper proposals
20 March 2022 : Notification of acceptance
March 2022 : Opening conference registrations
29 August - 2 September 2022 : ESSE conference
Titles and abstracts of the proposed papers for this seminar with a very short biography of their authors should be submitted directly to the convenors of the seminar:
Professor Michel Prum (Société des Anglicistes de l’Enseignement Supérieur)
Professor Felix Sprang (Deutscher Anglistenverband)
Professor Heidi Verplaetse (Belgian Association of Anglicists in Higher Education)
prum.michel@wanadoo.fr; felix.sprang@uni-siegen.de; heidi.verplaetse@kuleuven.be
Important dates:
28 February 2022 : Extended deadline for submissions of paper proposals
20 March 2022 : Notification of acceptance
March 2022 : Opening conference registrations
29 August - 2 September 2022 : ESSE conference
For More Details: https://esse2022.uni-mainz.de/
