Susan Bassnett

Translation Studies is currently one of the fastest growing interdisciplinary subjects in the world. Constructing Cultures brings together for the first time the work of the two translator/scholars who are regarded as founders of this major field of study. This collection of essays continues to develop some of the principal research lines that both have been pursuing in recent years, most specifically the cultural turn in Translation Studies. Among topics discussed are Chinese and Western theories of translation, the limits of translatability, when is a translation not a translation, why cultures develop certain genres at certain times, what is the relationship between Translation Studies and Cultural Studies. Some essays are genre specific, focusing on theatre translation or the translating of poetry, others are devoted to specific case studies, and consider the fortunes of such major writers as Virgil or Brecht in English. Written in the accessible, jargon-free style that characterises the work of Bassnett and Lefevere, this collection of essays will be invaluable to anyone interested in translation and comparative cultural studies.

This varied collection of essays represents the differing strands of work currently being undertaken in the exciting new field of Translation Studies and reflects a shift of emphasis away from a more descriptive form of translation towards the idea that translation occupies a seminal position in the devlopment of culture. Susan Bassnett is Director of the Centre for British Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Warwick. Andre Lefevere is Professor of Germanic Philology at the University of Texas at Austin.

This book considers the plays by Shakespeare produced during the reign of Elizabeth and discusses some of the key issues of the day in their historical context. Using a comparative method that seeks to move away from the division of Shakespeare's works into categories of tragedies, comedies and histories, plays are compared and contrasted for the purpose of analysing wider contextual questions. This is a useful book for students and, with its companion volume - Shakespeare: The Jacobean Plays which examines the plays written after the accession of James I in 1601, it provides an overview of the work of a great dramatist in his own time.

This major new introduction to comparative literature is for the students coming to the subject for the first time. Through an examination of a series of case studies and new theoretical developments, Bassnett reviews the current state of comparative literature world-wide in the 1990s. In the past twenty years of a range of new developments in critical theory have changed patterns of reading and approaches to literature: gender-based criticism, reception studies, the growth of translation studies, deconstruction and orientalism all have had a profound impact on work in comparative literature. Bassnett asks questions not only about the current state of comparative literature as a discipline, but also about its future. Since its beginnings in the nineteenth century, comparative literature has been closely associated with the emergence of national cultures, and its present expansion in many parts of the world indicates that this process is again underway, after a period of narrowly Eurocentric research in the field.

Elizabeth I is probably the most famous English woman ever to have lived. She has been celebrated as a great stateswoman, during whose reign England acquired some degree of security in the troubled European arena and at the same time began to lay the foundations for its future empire. She presided over a country undergoing a cultural renaissance previously unimagined. By the time of her death at the age of seventy in 1603, she was being heralded as rival to the Virgin Mary, as a second Queen of Earth and Heaven, as a woman more than mortal women. She has provided subject-matter for innumerable books: seventy biographies have appeared since 1890 and it is impossible to list the enormous number of historical novels based on some part of her life. However, among the many books written about Elizabeth I there is none like this one: Bassnett looks at the life and achievements of Elizabeth from a twentieth-century feminist perspective and considers her as writer, politician, scholar and woman. As a result she succeeds in presenting a more rounded portrait of a figure who has fascinated successive generations but whose private and public life has frequently been the subject of fantasy and speculation.

Elizabeth I is probably the most famous English woman ever to have lived. She has been celebrated as a great stateswoman, during whose reign England acquired some degree of security in the troubled European arena and at the same time began to lay the foundations for its future empire. She presided over a country undergoing a cultural renaissance previously unimagined. By the time of her death at the age of seventy in 1603, she was being heralded as rival to the Virgin Mary, as a second Queen of Earth and Heaven, as a woman more than mortal women. She has provided subject-matter for innumerable books: seventy biographies have appeared since 1890 and it is impossible to list the enormous number of historical novels based on some part of her life. However, among the many books written about Elizabeth I there is none like this one: Bassnett looks at the life and achievements of Elizabeth from a twentieth-century feminist perspective and considers her as writer, politician, scholar and woman. As a result she succeeds in presenting a more rounded portrait of a figure who has fascinated successive generations but whose private and public life has frequently been the subject of fantasy and speculation.