Clarissa Betrayed: Continental Translations of Richardson's Novel (Prevost, A.F. (France); Michaelis, J.D. (Germany)).

Abstract

The early translations of Samuel Richardson's Clarissa (1748) into German (by the Gottingen professor Johann David Michaelis) and French (by the novelist Antoine Francois Prevost) are examined simultaneously as interpretations of the original, as clues to the differences between French, English, and German literary tastes, as foundations of the novel's reception history, and as examples for translation theory. Each of the four main chapters of the dissertation examines one aspect of the structure of discourse in Richardson's text--the intertextual, the semiotic, the dialogic, and the gender-related-- and examines how that structure was perceived by the translators and reproduced in the target languages. The two translators approach the original from opposite directions. Prevost, like Lovelace, enjoys advertising his mastery of the text by making sure that readers perceive the discrepancies between original and translation. He also excises the text's moral lessons in order to create a more "readable" novel. Michaelis, sympathetic to Clarissa, attempts to hide the alterations which he was forced to make in the text. Prevost makes the discussion of male vs. female more ambiguous and unclear, while Michaelis shows a sympathy for the topic by filling the ambiguity of the English original with specific social content. Neither translator, however, is able to reproduce the contrast between st and ard and non-st and ard English in Richardson's text. Prevost is unable because French literary language was so highly st and ardized that it would not tolerate variants, Michaelis because German was still imbued with dialectical elements which render such contrast impossible. The two translations serve to demonstrate that, for all translators and abridgers, Clarissa has served as a palimpsest upon which they may write their own texts. They serve also as vantage points from which we may view the unique elements of Richardson's masterpiece.