Summers, CS (2014) Patterns of Authorship: The Translation of Christa Wolf’s Kindheitsmuster. German Life and Letters, 67 (3). pp. 378-398. ISSN 0016-8777
Abstract
Christa Wolf is widely regarded as the most internationally successful writer to have emerged from the GDR. However, a definition of authorship as a discursively constructed function presumes shifts in authorial identity as texts cross discursive boundaries, rendering ‘international’ authorship a fragmented, unstable category. Emerging at the intersection of textual, individual and institutionalised realities, the author-function is vulnerable to reshaping by a new receiving discourse. Intervention by agents in the translation process, on the textual level and in the interpretive frames provided by the paratexts that mediate between text and discourse, results in an understanding of the author that may exist in tension with her other discursive identities. Wolf’s example shows that the translated author’s function is subject to shift as it becomes dependent for its circulation on the institutions of a target culture: the author’s East German identity and her relative absence from target-culture discourse leave her vulnerable to appropriation by a powerful receiving discourse such as English-speaking literary culture, and the author-function that emerges has strongly influenced her international profile. Amongst Wolf’s translated texts, the English translation of Kindheitsmuster (1976; A Model Childhood, 1980) demonstrates most clearly the discursive reformation of translated authorship.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2014 The Author German Life and Letters © 2014 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Summers, CS (2014) Patterns of Authorship: The Translation of Christa Wolf’s Kindheitsmuster. German Life and Letters, 67 (3). 378 - 398. ISSN 1468-0483, which has been published in final form at http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/glal.12048. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Self-Archiving |
Keywords: | authorship, translation, Christa Wolf |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Languages Cultures & Societies (Leeds) > German (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 06 Oct 2015 15:43 |
Last Modified: | 29 Oct 2020 18:55 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/glal.12048 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1111/glal.12048 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:89954 |