I. Prismatic Translation and Jane Eyre as a World Work

Abstract

The chapter starts by giving a history of anglophone responses to Jane Eyre, both critical and creative, and arguing for the similar significance of translations: they too are interpretive acts that change the source text by their interpretation of it. It goes on to explain the pragmatic distinction between translations and other kinds of response that has been adopted in this volume: translations are taken as being published prose fiction texts that present themselves as being Jane Eyre in a different language. It then fleshes out this definition through a close reading of the 1849 French translation by ‘Old Nick’ (Paul Émile Daurand Forgues) and an account of other early translations. It concludes by building on Reynolds’s existing theory of prismatic translation to offer a definition of Jane Eyre as a world work – that is, as a work that is co-constituted by the English texts of Jane Eyre together with all their translations, and so as a work that is always changing while remaining continuous with itself.