Date of Award

1998

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Theatre

First Advisor

Leslie Wade

Abstract

In the 1960s, American plays presented in Montreal were translated in France; the following decade saw the first of American plays translated or adapted in Quebec. In the 1980s, the translative practices employed in the seventies proved the dominant mode. In the 1990s, only exceptionally has an American play been presented in a translation originating outside of Quebec. It is now the rule that all foreign plays produced in Quebec are translated in the Quebecois idiom. This translative situation has stabilized, and the translation of American plays into Quebecois reflects an established practice. The tracing and analysis of this translative practice and its evolution serve as the guiding focus of the dissertation. While the political impulse of national identification has played a great role in the legitimation of the translation of foreign plays in Quebecois, it is not the principal consideration that has led the artists of the Quebecois stage to shun foreign (i.e., French) translations and to produce local translations. Rather, it has been the secular concern of verisimilitude, of identification, and of theatrical efficiency that has made the Quebecois directors demand local and not European translations of American plays. We begin with the assumption that a theatrical translation exists only through its scenic realization. It exists only in the production project to which it is attached. The theatrical translation is thus part of the creative process of stage-representation, which includes the aspects of acting and scenography. Therefore, to analyze any particular theatrical translation, the project of the creators involved in the process has to be taken into account and assessed. By examining all of Arthur Miller's plays presented in Montreal, complemented with the interviews of those artists involved in the Miller productions, this dissertation attempts to identify and explain how the translative and the appropriation practices of American plays have evolved and developed in Quebec from the 1960s to the 1990s. It is a challenge to traditional scholarship which puts Quebecois politics at the forefront of Quebecois translation.

ISBN

9780599081765

Pages

147

DOI

10.31390/gradschool_disstheses.6785

Share

COinS