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Translation In The Eighteenth Century Gothic Novel The most notable novels from the eighteenth-century Gothic genre were written by British authors in English and translated throughout history into other languages, but other writers throughtout continental Europe contemporaneously emerged to write Gothic novels in their own native tongues [1]. While Brits like Horace Walpole and Ann Radcliffe were writing about castles and ghosts, so too was the German author Friederich Schiller, the French author Marquis de Sade, and the Ukranian author Jan Potoki. One of the Marquis de Sade's most famous novels The 120 Days of Sodomhas been translated from the French to English, German, and most recently Japanese [2]. Beyond continental Europe, it is difficult to find authors anywhere else in the world producing Gothic genre novels in the 18th century.


Translation As Framing Device

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At least two Gothic authors utilize the literary concept of translation as a framing device for their novels. Ann Radcliffe's Gothic novel The Italian boasts a weighty framing, wherein her narrator claims that the story the reader is about to hear has been recorded and translated from a manuscript entrusted to an Italian man by a close friend who overheard the story confessed in a church. Radcliffe uses this translational framing to evidence how her extraordinary story has travelled to the reader[3]. In the fictitious preface to his Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto, Horace Walpole claims his story was produced in Italy, recorded in German, then discovered and translated in English. Walpole's story of transnational translation lends his novel an air of tempting exoticism that his highly charicteristic of the Gothic genre[4].


Translation Into Other Media

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The 18th century Gothic novel has not only been transliterated in several world languages throughout history, but also translated into the media genres of film and even the graphic novel. The Monk is a 1990 UK produced film that loosely follows the plotline of Gothic author Matthew Lewis's novel of the same name. As recently as 2007, a comic book version of Ann Radcliffe's famous Gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho was published, complete with illustrations and word bubbles [5]. The popularity in the 18th century of Gothic genre works spawned a legacy of parodies of Gothic fiction - books published in the 1790s and dubbed “Northanger Horrid Novels.”


Metafiction Translations of the 18th-century Gothic Novel

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Moving beyond the mere replication of Gothic storytelling, two auteurs have notably explored the life of the the 18th century gothic novel outside of its body of plot, delving into the realms of authorship and veritability. Becoming Jane is a film that reaches beyond the Gothic parodies Jane Austen authored, and investigates her life that led up to her becoming an old, unmarried authoress. In this same metafiction vein, Czech surrealist short film director Jan Švankmajer produced a mockumentary in 1979 that aimed to explain the European geographical origins of Horace Walpole's gothic novel The Castle of Otranto[6]

References

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  1. ^ The First Gothics:A Critical Guide to the English Gothic Novel, by Frederick S. Frank
  2. ^ European Writers: The Romantic Century, edited by Jacques Barzun
  3. ^ The Italian by Ann Radcliffe
  4. ^ The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
  5. ^ Gothic Classics: Graphic Classics Volume 14
  6. ^ Jan Svankmajer.com
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http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0099609/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416508/


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