Lecture "Open Sesame": foreignness in Proust's language, by Emily Eells

As part of the seminar "Multilingualism, translation, creation / 2019-2020" at the École Normale Supérieure, 45 rue d'Ulm, Paris 5e, on 6 March 2020, between 3pm and 5pm, salle Weil, Emily Eells will give a lecture entitled "Open Sesame": foreignness in Proust's language.

Proust's translation of Ruskin, and in particular the passage in Sésame et les lys where he reflects on the meaning of words, will serve as the starting point for this talk. Emily Eells proposes to focus on play in Proust's language and the challenge it poses for his translators into English. Proust's verbal creativity – his anglicisms, his neologisms, the "cuirs" and wordplay he puts in the mouths of his characters – is put to the test by translation, which must probe their meaning. This study might bear the subtitle "Proust in English in the text", as it will examine both the English words he inscribes in his text and his own translation work, which deploys strategies aimed at preserving the imprints and borrowings of the foreign language in the original version.

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Emily Eells is professor of British literature at the Université Paris Nanterre. A Proust specialist and author of Proust's Cup of Tea: Homoeroticism and Victorian Culture (Ashgate, 2002), her current research focuses on John Ruskin and the illustrated book. She co-edited with Naomi Toth the proceedings of the conference Traduire la sonorité dans l'œuvre de Proust, published in 2018 by Honoré Champion.

Session organised with the Proust team.