Voltaire's Lettres philosophiques in english: The seditious voice of the first translation
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-7968.2019v39n1p94Abstract
This study confronts the English text of Voltaire’s Lettres philosophiques (Letters concerning the English Nation), which appeared in 1733, with three modern translations by Ernest Dilworth (1961), Leonard Tancock (1980) and Prudence L. Steiner (2007). The analysis focuses in particular on the thirteenth letter, devoted to John Locke, and the fourteenth letter, which compares Descartes and Newton. Adopting a more incisive voice than the modern versions, the original English translation, attributed to John Lockman, invokes the seditious aspect of Voltaire’s account of Locke’s empiricism and Newton’s cosmology in direct terms. In doing so, the contemporaneous Enlightenment translator reproduces what Berman calls the ‘signifiance’ of the original text ashe explicitly emphasises Voltaire’s illocutionary intent. Thanks to its historical simultaneity (“simultanéité historique”, Annie Brisset) the 1733 English text therefore forcefully conveys the message that Voltaire expresses in more reticent censorship-wary terms in the French version. The modern translations, on the other hand, reproduce this more evasive voice and no longer transmit the marks of subversion, which Lockman amplifies defiantly.
References
A. Ouvrages de Voltaire
Mr. de Voltaire. Letters concerning the English Nation. London: C. Davis & A. Lyon, 1733.
M.D.V***. Lettres écrites de Londres sur les Anglais et autres sujets. Basle [Londres: W. Bowyer], 1734.
M.D.V***. Lettres philosophiques. Amsterdam : Chez E. Lucas [Rouen: Jore], 1734.
The Works of M. de Voltaire translated from the French with Notes, historical and critical by T. Smollett, M.D. T. Francklin, M. A. and Others. London : Printed for J. Newbery [etc.], vol. 13, 1762.
Lettres philosophiques. Edition critique, avec une introduction et un commentaire, par Gustave Lanson. Paris: E. Cornély, 1909. Paris: Hachette, 1915, 1924.
Philosophical Letters (Letters Concerning the English Nation). Translated, with an Introduction, by Ernest Dilworth. Minneapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1961. Mineola. New York: Dover Publications, 2003.
Letters on England. Translated with an Introduction by Leonard Tancock. London: Penguin Books, 1980 & 2005.
Lettres philospohiques. Edition de Frédérc Deloffre. Paris: Gallimard (Folio Classique), 1986.
Letters concerning the English Nation. Edited with an Introduction and Notes by Nicholas Cronk. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994 & 2009.
Lettres philosophiques. Derniers écrits sur Dieu. Présentés par Gerhardt Stenger. Paris: Garnier-Flammarion, 1996.
Lettres philosophiques. Edition d’Olivier Ferret et Antony McKenna. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2000.
Philosophical Letters. Or, Letters Regarding the English Nation. Edited, with an Introduction, by John Leigh. Translated by Prudence L. Steiner. Indianapolis / Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company, 2007.
B. Ouvrages secondaires
Berman, Antoine. “La retraduction comme espace de traduction.” Palimpsestes, 4 (1990): 1-7.
Brisset, Annie. “Retraduire ou le corps changeant de la connaissance. Sur l’historicité de la traduction.” Palimpsestes, 15 (2004): 39-68.
Brown, Harcourt. “The Composition of the ‘Letters concerning the English Nation’”. The Age of the Enlightenment: Studies presented to Theodore Besterman Ed. Barber, W.H. and others. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1967. 15-34.
Copeland, Rita. Rhetoric, Hermeneutics and Translation in the Middle Ages. Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Cronk, Nicholas. “The ‘Letters concerning the English Nation’ as an English work reconsidering the Harcourt Brown thesis.” SVEC, 10 (2001): 226-239.
Genette, Gérard. Palimpsestes. Paris: Seuil, 1982.
_____. Seuils. Paris: Seuil, 1987.
Inventaire Voltaire. Sous la direction de Goulemot, Jean, Magnan, André & Masseau, Didier. Paris: Gallimard, 1995.
Jooken, Lieve & Rooryck, Guy. "John Locke ou la traduction de l’entendement ". Ton Naaijkens (ed.), Event or incident. On the Role of Translations in the Dynamics of Cultural Exchange 3 Ed Ton Naaijkens. Bern: Peter Lang, 2010. 211-246
Lee, J. Patrick. “The unexamined premise: Voltaire, John Lockman and the myth of the English Letters.” SVEC, 10 (2001): 340-270.
McMurran, Mary Helen. The spread of novels. Translation and prose fiction in the eighteenth century. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Rooryck, Guy & Jooken, Lieve. “Le péritexte des traductions anglaises du Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts de Jean-Jacques Rousseau: la voix énarrative du traducteur”. META, 58.3 (2013): 589-606.
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright Notice
Authors hold the copyright and grant the journal the right for their articles' first publication, being their works simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY), which allows the sharing of such works with its authorship acknowledged and its initial publication in this journal.
Authors are allowed to enter into separate additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or as a book chapter, with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal).
