European Shakespeares. Translating Shakespeare in the Romantic Age: Selected papers from the conference on Shakespeare Translation in the Romantic Age, Antwerp, 1990

Where, when, and why did European Romantics take to Shakespeare? How about Shakespeare's reception in enduring Neoclassical or in popular traditions? And above all: which Shakespeare did these various groups promote? This collection of essays leaves behind the time-honoured commonplaces about Shakespearean translation (the 'translatability' of Shakespeare's forms and meanings, the issue of 'loss' and 'gain' in translation, the distinction between 'translation' and 'adaptation', translation as an 'art'. etc.) and joins modern Shakespearean scholarship in its attempt to lay bare the cultural mechanisms endowing Shakespeare's texts with their supposedly inherent meanings. The book presents a fresh approach to the subject by its radically descriptive stance, by its search for an adequate underlying theory along interdisciplinary lines, and not in the least by its truly European scope. It traces common trends and local features not just in France and Germany, but also in Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Russia, Scandinavia, and the West Slavic cultures.

Table of Contents:
1. Acknowledgments; 2. Editorial Note; 3. Introduction; 4. 1. Translations and national literatures; 5. Shakespeare en France au tournant du XVIIIe siecle. Un dossier europeen (by Lambert, Jose); 6. The Romanticism of the Schlegel-Tieck Shakespeare and the History of Nineteenth-Century German Shakespeare Translation (by Habicht, Werner); 7. Shakespeare's Way into the West Slavic Literatures and Cultures (by Schultze, Brigitte); 8. Russian Shakespeare Translations in the Romantic Era (by Levin, Yuri D.); 9. The Discovery of Shakespeare in Scandinavia (by Smidt, Kristian); 10. Report (by Van den Broeck, Raymond); 11. 2. Literary, cultural, and theatrical traditions taking shape; 12. An Unpublished Pre-Romantic Hamlet in Eighteenth-Century Italy (by Fresco, Gaby Petrone); 13. Simao de Melo Brandao and the First Portuguese Version of Othello (by Afonso, Maria Joao da Rocha); 14. Providing Texts for a Literary Cult. Early Translations of Shakespeare in Hungary (by Davidhazi, Peter); 15. Shakespeare Translations for Eighteenth-Century Stage Productions in Germany: Different Versions of Macbeth (by Ranke, Wolfgang); 16. Report (by Hermans, Theo); 17. 3. Shifting poetics of translation; 18. Heurs et malheurs de Romeo et Juliette en France a l'epoque romantique (by Gury, Jacques); 19. The Comic Matric of Early German Shakespeare Translation (by Greiner, Norbert); 20. Hamlet in the Netherlands in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries. The Complexities of the History of Shakespeare's Reception (by Delabastita, Dirk); 21. Report (by D'haen, Theo); 22. Round Table; 23. Contributors; 24. Index