From Eald to New: Translating Early Medieval Poetry for the 21st Century
School of English, University College Cork, Ireland
6-7 June, 2014
In recent years, the shelves of commercial bookshops have been graced with accessible translations of medieval poetry from the Old English, Old Irish and Old Norse traditions, including Heaney’s award-winning rendition of Beowulf. Many of these reworkings give a contemporary flavour and immediacy to medieval texts, and they are increasingly being adopted for introductory courses on medieval literature. But what place do literary translations have in the academy, and should they be taught as creative works in their own right? How are the latest translations adapting to the needs of students and teachers? What exactly do we lose, and gain, in the translation of medieval texts?
We invite abstracts for 20 minute papers from both individuals and panels. Abstracts of approx. 250 words should be emailed to Dr Tom Birkett or Dr Kirsty March at ealdtonew2014@ucc.ie.
Topics may include:
- Audience, cultural specificity and local idiom
- The meeting place of literary and academic translations
- Past translations, constraints of precedence, and suppression of difference
- Ideas of ownership, authorship and canonicity
- Teaching the translation of medieval languages in the academy Problematic poetry: translating verse forms, metrics, poetic language
- The potential of new media to change our relationship to the translated text
- Translation theory applied to medieval texts
The closing date for submissions is 15 December 2013.