Translating Transgressive Texts: Gender, Sexuality and the Body in Contemporary Women’s Writing in French

This book explores the complexities of translating the recent transgressive turn in contemporary womens writing in French through close examination of references to gender identity, female sexuality, and corporeality. It combines feminist phenomenological perspectives on female lived experience with feminist translation theory to offer an insight into how the experiential is brought into language, how it journeys via language into new cultural contexts, and how it creates a dialogical space in which the subjectivities of those involved become open to the porosity of encounters with alterity.

Format: Hardback
Length: 200 pages
Publication date: 22 December 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Through a meticulous exploration of references to gender identity, female sexuality, and corporeality, this groundbreaking book emerges as the first of its kind to shed light on the intricate complexities of translating the recent transgressive turn in contemporary French women's writing. In a comprehensive approach, the book delves into four compelling case studies, namely the translations into English of Nelly Arcans' Putain (2001), Catherine Millets' La Vie sexuelle de Catherine M. (2001), Nancy Hustons' Infrarouge (2010), and Nina Bouraouis' Garçon manqué (2000). Through these case studies, the book explores how transgressive topoi such as prostitution, anorexia, matrophobia, rape, female desire, and transgenderism are translated, thereby offering a profound insight into the mechanisms through which these themes are dis/placed by translation at both textual and paratextual levels.

By combining feminist phenomenological perspectives on female lived experience with feminist translation theory, this interdisciplinary study pioneers a unique approach to understanding how the experiential is brought into language, how it traverses linguistic boundaries to enter new cultural contexts through translation, and how it creates a dialogical space that fosters the openness of subjectivities among those involved, including authors, narrators, protagonists, and translators. This volume holds immense appeal to scholars engaged in translation studies, French Studies, and gender and sexuality studies, particularly those with a keen interest in feminist translation and literary translation.

Weight: 560g
Dimension: 229 x 152 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032620763