Performative translation, and the impossibility of Romantic mediation in Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus (1834)

Abstract

AbstractWhilst Thomas Carlyle's Sartor Resartus has sparked a variety of critical interpretations since its publication, it has never been read as a pseudotranslation. Building upon recent research in this field, this article proposes that through its pseudotranslational imitation of late‐Romantic periodical translations, Sartor critiques the highly self‐aware performativity on which this writing is founded. Through media‐theoretical analysis, this article argues that translation as it appeared within late‐Romantic periodicals constructs elaborate textual performances of its own mediation, through references to the media ecology within which it operates. The article demonstrates that Sartor mounts two parallel critiques of this mode of translation through its reproduction of its performative strategies: first, through the way in which these performances of mediation are portrayed as impeding mediation; second, through the philosophy of language itself being pseudotranslated. In this way, Carlyle stages a confrontation between two distinct modes of Romantic writing: its symbolic and immanent ideal contrasts with its performative and mediative reality.