Didactismo y moralidad en la labor de traducción de Joaquina García Balmaseda (1837-1911)

Joaquina García Balmaseda (1837-1911) es hoy en día una escritora conocida por sus contribuciones a la literatura y el periodismo de mediados del siglo XIX. Existen muchas referencias a su producción literaria y a sus colaboraciones en revistas femeninas de la época, diseminadas en artículos y capítulos de libros; sin embargo, su labor como traductora no ha sido tan estudiada. El inmenso catálogo de traducciones de Balmaseda pone de relieve la importancia que tuvo esta parcela en su propia obra y, a la vez, muestra cómo contribuyó a divulgar los escritores europeos más importantes de su tiempo (George Sand, Paul Féval, Alexandre Dumas y Wilkie Collins, Charles Dickens y Mary Elizabeth Braddon entre otros). García Balmaseda ejerció un papel muy importante como mediadora cultural, sobre todo, en La Correspondencia de España (1860-1925), revista en la que colaboró asiduamente con sus traducciones. Destaca la inmediatez con la que tradujo las obras, lo dificultoso que resultaba trasladar y acortar novelas de grandes dimensiones para acomodarlas a la prensa. Ahora bien, sus convicciones ideológicas se hallan en el germen de sus producciones literarias y de traducción. En estas, suprime partes que no considera apropiadas para el lector de la época; modifica el argumento y lo acomoda para que forme parte de esa «literatura edificante» tan propia de la época isabelina. En la mayoría de los casos, las supresiones o cambios afectan a cuestiones políticas, morales y religiosas, a expresiones contrarias a la tradición, matrimonio, familia o valores de la patria.

"Émile Zola and the Naturalistic School, or Realism in French Literature" by Mary Elizabeth Braddon, edited with an Introduction and Textual Notes.

Mary Elizabeth Braddon wrote an essay on the French Naturalist novelist, Émile Zola, in 1885 for the Fortnightly Review at the request of the editor, T.H.S. Escott. However, Braddon later withdrew from publication. This edition of the essay, with contextual introduction, a note on editorial principles and explanatory notes is the first publication of Braddon’s manuscript which otherwise remains accessible to scholars only in the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas.

The Victorian Baby in Print

The Victorian Baby in Print: Infancy, Infant Care, and Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture explores the representation of babyhood in Victorian Britain. The first study to focus exclusively on the baby in nineteenth-century literature and culture, this critical analysis discusses the changing roles of an iconic figure. A close look at the wide-ranging portrayal of infants and infant care not only reveals how divergent and often contradictory Victorian attitudes to infancy really were, but also prompts us to revise persistent clichés surrounding the literary baby that emerged or were consolidated at the time, and which are largely still with us. Drawing on a variety of texts, including novels by Charles Dickens, Wilkie Collins, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Mrs Henry Wood, and Charlotte Yonge, as well as parenting magazines of the time, childrearing manuals, and advertisements, this study analyses how their representations of infancy and infant care utilised and shaped an iconography that has become definitional of the Victorian age itself. The familiar clichés surrounding the Victorian baby have had a lasting impact on the way we see both the Victorians and babies, and a close analysis might also prompt a self-critical reconsideration of the still burgeoning market for infant care advice today.

KONTRUKSI KEGILAAN DALAM NOVEL LADY AUDLEY’S SECRET KARYA MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON

ABSTRAKPermasalahan permasalahan mengenai kegilaan sering menjadi tema para penulis sastra. Tema ini juga banyak hadir di karya sastra pada era Victoria. Para penulis besar menghadirkan narasi mengenai para perempuan yang berstrategi untuk menghindari budaya patriarti, namun tidak ingin dijebloskan ke dalam suaka. Hal ini juga terjadi pada karakter utama dalam novel Lady Audley’s Secret (1862) karya Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Lucy Graham tumbuh dalam kemiskinan, ia sangat peduli dengan peningkatan status sosial dan keuangannya. Fakta bahwa ibunya dilembagakan karena kegilaan juga telah menghantui Lucy sepanjang waktu. Dia menikahi orang-orang kaya seperti George Talboys dan Robert Audley, namun berakhir dengan budaya patriarki yang sangat keras yang mana membawanya pada kegilaan. Dengan demikian, penelitian ini bertujuan untuk mengetahui bagaimana tokoh Lucy dikontruksi menjadi “orang gila” dalam pandangan masyarakat Victoria. Untuk menjawab permasalahan penelitian, penulis menggunakan analisis tekstual sebagai metode penelitiannya. Teori yang digunakan untuk membantu analisis yakni perspektif yang diusulkan oleh Foucault mengenai kontruksi kegilaan yang terjadi pada subjek. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa tindakan yang manipulatif serta culas yang dilakukan oleh Lucy dinilai sebagai suatu kegilaan dan tidak sesuai dengan norma serta nilai pada era tersebut. Pada akhirnya ia pun dimasukan ke dalam rumah sakit jiwa dan meninggal di dalamnya.

Translating Style: Flaubert’s Influence on English Narrative Prose

General accounts of Gustave Flaubert’s influence on English-language writers have tended to assume that the publication of his fiction was enough to change the style of English prose. However, close examination of Flaubert’s reception in the second half of the nineteenth century shows that the novels and stories alone did not bring about a widespread shift in English prose style. Before such a transformation could happen, his theoretical statements about style in the correspondence needed to be shared with and interpreted for a new audience. Flaubert’s fiction did exert a qualified influence on the relatively few English-language writers who read and responded to it, including Mary Elizabeth Braddon and Henry James. However, not until the 1883 publication of his correspondence with George Sand, as well as significant critical mediation and translation (most notably by Guy de Maupassant, Walter Pater, and Eleanor Marx-Aveling), did his influence on English writers reach its full extent.

Interlude

This short interlude leaves London in order to consider the seaside as a site of pastoral retreat. It discusses the popularity of resorts in the period. Dickens, Samuel Beazley, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, WM Thackeray, and Anthony Trollope transplant traditional pastoral narratives to the seaside; here, hotels, inns, and boarding houses witness scenes of escape, liberation, and personal transformation, many of which are more ambivalent than they appear. The Interlude begins with a study of class, wealth, and the rags-to-riches tale in the rented spaces of Brighton, Margate, and Ramsgate, and then moves on to stories of romance, heartbreak, and sexual license in Brighton, Deal, Lowestoft, Margate, and Yarmouth. The final section focuses on health, convalescence, and death.

Afterword

It is worth repeating the roll call: Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, Caroline Norton, Charlotte Brontë, George Eliot, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, Jane Johnston Schoolcraft, Margaret Fuller, Susan Fenimore Cooper, Celia Thaxter, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Francis Wright, and Lydia Maria Child. The essays in Gendered Ecologies: New Materialist Interpretations of Women Writers in the Long Nineteenth Century...