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9 - Translating Daisy Miller

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 December 2009

Douglas McFarland
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Oglethorpe University, Georgia
R. Barton Palmer
Affiliation:
Clemson University, South Carolina
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Summary

Near the beginning of Henry James's The Portrait of a Lady (1881) we learn that the brother-in-law of Isabel Archer is at a loss to understand her. She is, he observes, “written in a foreign tongue; I can't make her out.” Ludlow goes on to confess, “Well, I don't like originals; I like translations.” The inability of others to take Isabel on her own terms and the need for a familiar context in which she might be placed speak to James's interest in women, especially American women in a European culture where they are often as misunderstood as they might have been in America. But it also speaks to the subject of my essay: the translation of nineteenth-century American originals into the contemporary medium of film. Ludlow would no doubt prefer a two-hour film version of Isabel to the six hundred pages of often dense prose which James (1843–1916) devotes to her. But I also suspect that he might very well be bored if he were to sit through the 126 minutes of Jane Campion's film version of the novel. The point I am making is that the translation of a novel into a film is a much more complicated process than Ludlow might imagine. For my purposes, let me put it another way: translation is not in the service of an audience which cannot decipher an original, but rather, as Walter Benjamin asserts, “Translation marks their stage of a continued life … a transformation and a renewal of something living.”

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2007

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References

Cross, David, “Framing the ‘Sketch’: Bogdanovich's Daisy Miller,” in Bradley, John R., ed., Henry James on Stage and Screen (New York: Palgrave, 2000).Google Scholar
Gerstner, David A., and Janet Staiger, eds. and “Introduction,” Authorship and Film (New York: Routledge, 2003).
Naremore, James, ed. and “Introduction,” Film Adaptation (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000).
Wexman, Virginia Wright, ed. and “Introduction,” Film and Authorship (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003).

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  • Translating Daisy Miller
    • By Douglas McFarland, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Oglethorpe University, Georgia
  • Edited by R. Barton Palmer, Clemson University, South Carolina
  • Book: Nineteenth-Century American Fiction on Screen
  • Online publication: 22 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511607554.010
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  • Translating Daisy Miller
    • By Douglas McFarland, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Oglethorpe University, Georgia
  • Edited by R. Barton Palmer, Clemson University, South Carolina
  • Book: Nineteenth-Century American Fiction on Screen
  • Online publication: 22 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511607554.010
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Translating Daisy Miller
    • By Douglas McFarland, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Oglethorpe University, Georgia
  • Edited by R. Barton Palmer, Clemson University, South Carolina
  • Book: Nineteenth-Century American Fiction on Screen
  • Online publication: 22 December 2009
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511607554.010
Available formats
×