Copyright

Madli Kütt

Published On

2023-11-14

Page Range

pp. 722–749

Language

  • English

Print Length

28 pages

16. ‘Beside myself; or rather out of myself’

First Person Presence in the Estonian Translation of Jane Eyre

  • Madli Kütt (author)
Chapter of: Prismatic Jane Eyre: Close-Reading a World Novel Across Languages(pp. 722–749)
The essay discusses the ways that Jane Eyre’s intense presence in the text both as a first person narrator and an experiencing character is changed in translation to Estonian, a relatively more passive language than English. It focuses on the narrative aspects of the translator’s immersive experience: which scenes and settings in the narrative tend to increase or decrease the presence of the ‘I’ in the text? How do changing degrees of closeness to or distance from the first person alter the point of view and other narrative functions? How does Jane come across through her narration in the Estonian version?

Contributors

Madli Kütt

(author)
Lecturer in French language at Estonian Military Academy

Madli Kütt is an Estonian translator and lecturer in French language at the Estonian Military Academy. She is currently working on her dissertation ‘The Fictional Subject and Imaginative Views in Marcel Proust’s ’A la recherche du temps perdu’ and its translation into Estonian’, and has published articles on the topic. Her research interests are centred on literary translation, particularly concentrating on theories of fictionality, mental imagery in the processes of writing and translation, and ’small literatures’.