Reimagining translated children's literature: Gender and physical difference in selected English translations, retranslations and re-editions of Le Avventure di Pinocchio and La Belle et la Bête.

Williams, Rebecca Charlene 2021. Reimagining translated children's literature: Gender and physical difference in selected English translations, retranslations and re-editions of Le Avventure di Pinocchio and La Belle et la Bête. PhD Thesis, Cardiff University. Item availability restricted.

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Abstract

Translated children's literature represents a cultural experience which intervenes in a child's perception of the world, and its social value is thus important to examine. The aim of this thesis is to understand how translated children's literature is deployed as a tool to communicate to young readers representations of gender and physical difference, two notions that are pivotal within contemporary discussions of identity. To do this, it engages with the theoretical conceptualisations of translation, retranslation, rewriting and re-editioning which are located in the field of Translation Studies. The thesis turns to two classical European children's tales – Le Avventure di Pinocchio (1883) [The Adventures of Pinocchio] and La Belle et la Bête (1756) [Beauty and the Beast] – to explore how processes of translation affect the construction, transmission and transformation of gender and physical difference in stories for children. It examines how translation can intervene in the way in which these notions are exhibited in these two popular children's tales, both of which have travelled diachronically and diatopically. Le Avventure di Pinocchio and La Belle et la Bête have been passed from generation to generation and from culture to culture since their inception, and they are thus ideally positioned to investigate how the child reader has been presented with notions of identity at different moments in time and in different cultural contexts. The analysis specifically considers how these two classics of children's literature have journeyed to and within Britain, carrying images of gender and physical difference with them. It aims to disentangle those images as they cross cultural, linguistic and temporal borders and are reshaped for young audiences in Britain over time. As its methodological approach, it uses retranslation, rewriting and re-editioning to unpack how translation can mediate in portrayals of gender and physical difference and how this, in turn, can shape children's narratives.

Item Type:	Thesis (PhD)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Modern Languages
Subjects:	P Language and Literature > PB Modern European Languages P Language and Literature > PZ Childrens literature
Date of First Compliant Deposit:	18 March 2021
Last Modified:	05 Oct 2022 09:11
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/139877

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