Publications

Publication details [#622]

Anastasiadou, Anastasia. 1999. Re-writing hegemony in Babel: a Greek translation of T.S. Eliot’s four quartets. Target 11 (2) : 317–327.
Publication type
Article in jnl/bk
Publication language
English
Source language
Target language
Person as a subject
Title as subject
Journal DOI
10.1075/target

Abstract

This paper seeks to determine the ways in which the translation of T.S. Eliot’sFour Quartets by the post-war Greek poet A. Decavalles challenges the hegemony of this major text of the Western canon. Four Quartets is considered an anti-local poem, expressing the desire for the creation of “classic” English, which presupposes a transcendental linguistic essence and a “universal’ perspective. Decavalles evinces an active attitude towards translation both in his reference to it as “re-creation” and in his creation of a target text which is at points not fluent, and even problematic. The opacity of the rewriting of Four Quartets in Greek, a language of a peripheral European country, constitutes a political act of resistance to Western (modernist) hegemony as it undermines the metaphysical certainties of Eliots’ text.
Source : Abstract in journal