Channel Crossings
French and English Poetry in Dialogue 1550-2000

Clive Scott

Legenda (General Series)

Legenda

1 December 2002  •  284pp

ISBN: 1-900755-54-8 (paperback)  •  RRP £75, $99, €85

EnglishFrenchPoetryTranslation


Scott's subtle and adventurous analysis breaks new ground in textual understanding, while his translations radically challenge established orthodoxies. As he crosses back and forth between French and English poetry, he has illuminating encounters with a wide range of poets, from Labé and Shakespeare to Auden and Jaccottet.

The embodiment of gender in the sonnet; the performance of the dramatic voice; the inflexions of the self in the voice of lyric verse; the 'landscaping' of nature in the line of verse; the interventions of the translator in the peculiar lives of the prose poem and free verse; the tasks of the translator and the comparatist in a new age - these are some of the issues addressed by Clive Scott in a sequence of essays as absorbing as they are original.

Clive Scott is Professor of European Literature in the University of East Anglia and is the author of many ground-breaking books on French poetry.

Winner of the 2004 Gapper Prize, awarded annually by the Society for French Studies for the best book of its year published by a scholar working in French studies in Britain or Ireland. The citation noted: In his book, Clive Scott gives a subtle and adventurous account of how processes of cultural exchange have played an active and enduring role in the development of the language of poetry in French and English over a period of several centuries... The judges' choice was made in the light of the book's originality and its likely impact on wider critical debate on the language of poetry and on questions of method and approach in comparative literature.

Reviews:

  • ‘Crossing the boundary between the critical and the creative, Clive Scott continues the debate on the 'undecidable' in the meaning of art text and concomitant problems in the theory of translation.’ — Roger Pensom, Modern Language Review 99.1, 2004, 281-2 (full text online)
  • ‘The imaginative and sensitive essays explore the principles of translation and the notion of comparative literature... Stimulating arguments link all the essays, such as the celebration of the necessary difference between source and target texts, especially in poetry, where 'the' meaning remains defiantly unseizable.’ — unsigned notice, Forum for Modern Language Studies XL.1, 2004, 116
  • ‘Scott is a critic who can find the perfect critical expression for the tiniest little effect, who can describe microscopic modulations of thought and language, and thereby give them status in the reading process. He is also a critic with his eye on the big picture, who has produced a discipline-defining book, showing us where we have got to and suggesting where next we might profitably go. It richly deserved to win the Gapper Prize.’ — Patrick McGuinness, French Studies LVIII.3, 2004, 446-7

Bibliography entry:

Scott, Clive, Channel Crossings: French and English Poetry in Dialogue 1550-2000 (Legenda, 2002)

First footnote reference: 35 Clive Scott, Channel Crossings: French and English Poetry in Dialogue 1550-2000 (Legenda, 2002), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Scott, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Scott, Clive. 2002. Channel Crossings: French and English Poetry in Dialogue 1550-2000 (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Scott 2002: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Scott 2002: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)


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