British novelist Jane Austen is one of the best-known authors, especially in the English-speaking world. Her novels are widely read, and adaptations and continuations — textual and transmedia — of her books are countless. In their two centuries of existence, there have been over 50 translations of her work in French alone.
How was her writing, which is filled with humour, irony, and free indirect speech, integrated into the French corpus? While Austen is already the subject of numerous debates in the Anglo-Saxon world, how was her work interpreted across the Channel and proposed to a French readership? For the author, did this linguistic transfer result in a translation or mistranslation?
A literary analysis combining translatology, narratology, and feminist studies, this book examines the French translations of three of Jane Austen’s novels — Northanger Abbey (1803 [†1818]), Pride and Prejudice (1813), and Persuasion (†1818) — with a diachronic approach.
In this translatological and literary study of the French versions of Austen’s novels, Rosemarie Fournier-Guillemette is interested in how Austen’s voice, which inspired numerous feminists through her criticism of the institution of marriage, was conveyed in France.
