Rhian Atkin – författare

Textual Wanderings: The Theory and Practice of Narrative Digression

Saramago’s labyrinths is the first book-length study to focus on the relationship between form and the content in Saramago’s writing, paying particular attention to Ensaio sobre a Cegueira (Blindness) and Todos os Nomes (All the Names). Atkin provides a close textual analysis of Blindness and All the Names, and suggests that the labyrinth pervades Saramago’s work, both in the form of the text, and as a literary and philosophical trope. She makes clear connections between these novels and Saramago’s other literary works, and identifies ways in which Saramago causes the reader to return to and consider the philosophical, epistemological and ethical concerns and dilemmas that are recurrent in his literary output. Atkin’s jargon-free approach to Saramago’s complex ideas, and her thorough understanding of Portuguese history, culture and society, make this an accessible yet challenging guide to Saramago’s fiction, for undergraduate and postgraduate students and scholars with or without prior knowledge of the Portuguese context.

This book constitutes the most detailed and wide-ranging comparative study to date of how European literatures written in less well known languages try, through translation, to reach the wider world. Through case studies of over thirteen different national contexts as diverse as Bosnian, Catalan, Czech, Dutch, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish and Serbian, it explores patterns and contrasts in approaches to supply-driven translation, cultural diplomacy, institutional support and international gate-keeping, while examining the particular fates of poetry, women’s writing and genre fiction, and the opportunities arising from trans-medial circulation, self-translation and translingualism and a more radical critique of power balances in the translation and publishing industries. Its comparative approach challenges both the narratives of uniqueness that arise from discrete national approaches and the narrative of tragic marginalization that prevails in world literary approaches. Instead, it uses an interdisciplinary mix of literary, historical, sociological, gender- and translation-studies approaches to illuminate the often pioneering, innovative thinking and strategies that mark these literatures as they take on the inequalities of globalization.

This book constitutes the most detailed and wide-ranging comparative study to date of how European literatures written in less well known languages try, through translation, to reach the wider world. Through case studies of over thirteen different national contexts as diverse as Bosnian, Catalan, Czech, Dutch, Maltese, Polish, Portuguese, Swedish and Serbian, it explores patterns and contrasts in approaches to supply-driven translation, cultural diplomacy, institutional support and international gate-keeping, while examining the particular fates of poetry, women’s writing and genre fiction, and the opportunities arising from trans-medial circulation, self-translation and translingualism and a more radical critique of power balances in the translation and publishing industries. Its comparative approach challenges both the narratives of uniqueness that arise from discrete national approaches and the narrative of tragic marginalization that prevails in world literary approaches. Instead, it uses an interdisciplinary mix of literary, historical, sociological, gender- and translation-studies approaches to illuminate the often pioneering, innovative thinking and strategies that mark these literatures as they take on the inequalities of globalization.

Textual Wanderings: The Theory and Practice of Narrative Digression