Abstract
Modernism is generally defined as a major revolt against prevalent aesthetic traditions of the Western world and is usually associated with the cultural and social context of the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century, when all forms of expression were coming under investigation and the relation of language to logic and reality became a central theme. Taking as a point of departure the notion of linguistic experiment as an essential element of literary modernism, this article proposes to re-evaluate the ideological implications of modernism s experimental poetics in the light of the modernist writers engagement with translation as mode of literary composition. Drawing from contemporary translation theories, the notion of translation is developed as a self-conscious interrogation of the nature and function of communication; accordingly, it is argued that this notion informs modernist epistemology. Through an examination of representative authors and texts, the essay demonstrates that a large number of modernist writers (many of them also translators) were foreigners who sought to express the articulation of alternative identities through a radically new language. Ultimately, the article explores the different ways in which translation may be used as an enlightening paradigm of thought for modernism. (A.)
Users
Please
log in to take part in the discussion (add own reviews or comments).