Thomas De Quincey, Dark Interpreter

Brecht de Groote is an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Arts and Philosophy of the University of Ghent, Belgium. His research focuses on the Romantic period, extending into the eighteenth century and Victorian period; in particular, he is interested in the legacies of late-Romantic writing (1820s through early 1850s). Combining methods at the intersection of translation studies, media theory and literary theory, he investigates the ways in which British culture is shaped by ideas of translation and mediation, particularly as it engaged with France and Germany. Brecht previously held (post)doctoral positions at the Universities of Ghent, Leuven and Edinburgh. He has a monograph with Edinburgh University Press, Thomas De Quincey: Romanticism in Translation, and his work has appeared in Studies in Romanticism, Romanticism and the European Romantic Review, amongst other venues. He is currently working on a project on Romantic (pseudo-)translation and deception.

This passionately argued and engagingly written book opens up new vistas onto De Quincey’s ways of reading and writing ‘as an interpreter’. Reappraising De Quincey's cosmopolitan, multilingual profile, De Groote locates him convincingly　- and fascinatingly -　at the centre of Romantic-period cross-cultural dialogues and intersections.

• AcknowledgmentsDe Quincey and Translation: A TimelineIntroduction: Dark Interpreter1. [I] Wrote This: Authorship, Translatorship2. How to Write English: The Transnationalism of a National Style3. Translating (against) Kant: A Translator’s Idealism4. The Ghost of Cutler’s Stockings: The Idea of TranslationCoda: A Yearning for TranslationBibliographyAbbreviationsIndex