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Interconnecting Translation Studies and Imagology
Edited by Luc van Doorslaer, Peter Flynn and Joep Leerssen
[Benjamins Translation Library 119] 2016
► pp. 87–107

Englishness in German translations of Alice in Wonderland

In order to explain away the peculiarity of Alice in Wonderland to a German audience, peritexts in many translations construct nonsense, the author Dodgson/Carroll and the novel itself as particularly English phenomena. Examining forewords and afterwords and some German translations, especially two post-war translations from 1922 and 1949 with clear and distinctive Anglo-German cultural agendas, this article will reveal a central paradox: while Englishness is evoked in these peritexts so that the familiarity of the national tropes may supposedly serve to counterbalance the strangeness of the novel, the translations themselves may, in contrast, actually neutralise or domesticate this purported Englishness. Combining imagology and translation studies, this analysis reveals strangely hybrid translations which peritextually proclaim one thing but in practice do another.

Keywords: Englishness, nonsense, imagology, translation studies, paratexts, narrator of the translation
Article outline
  • Englishness as a trope in German Alice in Wonderland translations
  • Imagology, translation studies and paratexts
  • German Alice in Wonderlands and their peritexts
  • The life and work of Dodgson/Carroll
  • The genesis of Alice in Wonderland
  • The socio-historic context
  • The translations themselves
  • The Englishness of Alice in Wonderland
  • Case study 1: Alice and Anglo-German relations
  • Case study 2: Alice in Wonderland and denazification
  • Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 25 February 2016
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/btl.119.06sul
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