Translation and transcreation of Salomé. Oscar Wilde’s strategies of (self-)estrangement in French
Juliette Loesch
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HTML version of the abstract and keywords [English]:
Title
Translation and transcreation of Salomé. Oscar Wilde’s strategies of (self-)estrangement in French
Abstract
Oscar Wilde’s Salomé (1893), written in French and then translated in English by Lord Alfred Douglas, created quite a stir when it was first published in France and then banned from the English stage. In this tragedy in one act based on a Biblical theme, Wilde departs from the familiar setting of his witty comedies of manners (The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windermere’s Fan) to focus on a favourite icon of French Symbolist artists and writers. Wilde’s choice of a foreign language deliberately heightens the artificiality of the exotic setting, bizarre atmosphere, and stilted style of this decadent play. Self-estrangement through self-translation indeed offered new creative possibilities and allowed Wilde to reinvent himself as a writer. As the comparison of the first manuscript with the published version shows, Wilde’s idiosyncratic French highlights the translational nature of the project. Considering Salomé through the lens of translation thus troubles commonplaces about original writing and authorship, as well as the authority attached to the source text and language.
Keywords
Self-translation, transcreation, translational poetics, Salome, interlanguage
October 17, 201628(2) - 2016