Copyright

Ana Teresa Marques dos Santos, Cláudia Pazos-Alonso

Published On

2023-11-14

Page Range

pp. 502–523

Language

  • English

Print Length

22 pages

9. A Mind of her Own

Translating the ‘volcanic vehemence’ of Jane Eyre into Portuguese

Chapter of: Prismatic Jane Eyre: Close-Reading a World Novel Across Languages(pp. 502–523)
This essay explores seven Portuguese-language translations of Jane Eyre, ranging from the nineteenth-century periodical O Zoophilo, through to two twenty-first century versions. We discuss renditions of two specific extracts (from Chapters 12 and 34), deploying back translations for readers unfamiliar with Portuguese. In a selection that spans both Brazil and Portugal, we consider how political contexts and personal agendas shape translator engagement with the yearning for freedom that characterises Bronte’s heroine. In particular, close attention to the seismic prison/escape dynamic, through keywords such as ‘mind’, ‘masterhood’ and possessives and adjectives indicative of Jane’s self-affirming impetus, serve to illuminate gender politics.

Contributors

Ana Teresa Marques dos Santos

(author)

Ana Teresa Marques dos Santos holds a Ph.D. in Translation Studies (University of Warwick), and is a Lector at the University of Aveiro in Portugal. Her key research interests are in translation history, including flows and reception. She has published on radio broadcast translations, the translation and censorship of William Faulkner and Oscar Wilde, and the dissemination of Brazilian translations and Spanish literature during the Portuguese New State regime. She is a member of the ‘Intercultural Literature in Portugal 1930-2000’ research project, based at three universities in Lisbon. She is currently researching literary women translators in Portugal.

Cláudia Pazos-Alonso

(author)
Professor of Portuguese and Gender Studies at University of Oxford
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0464-683X

Cláudia Pazos-Alonso is Professor of Portuguese and Gender Studies, University of Oxford. Her research interests range across nineteenth and twentieth-century Lusophone literature. Book publications include Francisca Wood and Nineteenth-Century Periodical Culture: Pressing for Change (2020); Antigone Daughters? Gender, Genealogy, and the Politics of Authorship in 20th-Century Portuguese Women’s Writing (2011, with Hilary Owen), Imagens doEu na Poesia de Florbela Espanca (1997). She has also co-edited the volumes Reading Literature in Portuguese (2013), A Companion to Portuguese Literature (2009), and Closer to the Wild Heart: Essays on Clarice Lispector (2002) and guest-edited journal issues on major contemporary authors such as Lidia Jorge and Mia Couto.