Narrative Cross-Dressing and Minority Languages

A couple of new Brontë-related scholarly papers:

O travestismo narrativo em O Professor, de Charlotte Brontë
Sara Novaes Rodrigues, CESV - Centro de Ensino Superior de Vitória

Cadernos De Literatura Comparada, (47), 73–87 (2022)

Partindo da análise do primeiro romance da escritora Charlotte Brontë, O Professor (1857), este artigo pro-cura oferecer um panorama crítico das teorias sobre o travestismo narrativo, ao mesmo tempo que reflete sobre as condições de escrita das mulheres no século XIX

Jane Eyre in Scots Translation – a Subversive Text in Minority Language Revitalization

Adrianna Stańczak, University of Warsaw

New Vistas in Language Studies. Young Scholars’ Perspectives. ATENA 2, pp. 91-103 (2022)

Half of the world’s languages are considered to be endangered, according to the

European Union, and one of the ways in which the EU is attempting to support minority

and less-spoken languages is with legislation. However, the European Charter for Regional

or Minority Languages, similarly to other national and international documents protecting

minor languages, is often criticized for its shortcomings and inadequate support offered to

these languages and the communities that speak them. One of the criticisms is that these

kinds of documents tend to leave almost all of the power in the hands of the state, which

decides what languages are to be protected and how. Unequal power relations between languages have been argued to be a key factor in the minority status and the endangered position of a language, and existing legislation does not seem to be attempting to disrupt them;

rather, it reinforces these existing power structures. Literary translation, which is considered

to be one of the ways to promote minority language use and raise the status of a language,

can also be a deeply subversive activity, perhaps especially when it involves the translation

of a classic piece of literature that in itself is already a deeply subversive text. Jane Eyre, a beloved text profoundly concerned with injustice and power, could comfortably be described

as both a classic and subversive, and it was also originally written in English, the language

that has replaced Scots as the dominant language in Scotland. Its translation into Scots has

the potential of having a stronger impact on Scots-speaking readers and therefore being

more empowering to them and more disruptive to the existing power structures, including

linguistic ones.