Inter-subjectivity and intra-communality in Ciaran Carson’s Poetic Translations

This thesis presents an analysis of Northern Irish poet, Ciaran Carson’s style of poetic translation in four volumes published between 1998 and 2012: The Alexandrine Plan (1998), The Inferno of Dante Alighieri (2002), The Táin (2007), and In the Light of (2012). The thesis discusses the implementation of transitional structures for all-inclusive self-governance in Northern Ireland in 1998, the Good Friday Agreement, as the central critical context of Carson’s translational poetics. Three main areas of the Good Friday Agreement (dialogue, identity and commemoration) are discussed, both in how they have worked in cross-communal reconciliation of differences and conflict, and in how they are manifested in the practice of Carson’s translations. The critical framework for analysis consists in a sociological approach to dialogue on an inter-subjective, intra-cultural level; theories of poetic translation; and conceptual approaches to civic integration. Jürgen Habermas’s model for self-regulative dialogic practice provides a critical analysis through which to comprehend Carson’s inter-subjective approach to producing a type of translational equivalence. Carson’s ‘close’ equivalence to poetic form frames the inter-subjective exchange between translator and original poet in his commissioned versions of lyric sonnet forms and epic types of verse. His mainly ‘loose’ semantic selection of culturally symbolic signifiers and subjective poetic expression reveals his response to the originals’ contexts and styles and his way of commenting obliquely on his own cultural context. Carson demonstrates significantly different uses of form in the lyric sonnet forms published in 1998 and 2012. While authoritative form, structure and scheme either trap or distance his translated-subjects in the 1998 volume, the unstructured prose Carson selects to produce a new poetic form in the 2012 volume facilitates informal expression through unidentifiable voices and weak rhyme. Carson’s handling of lexis and syntax in the two epic types of verse demonstrate his shift from emotional evocations of communal desire and frustration to grammatical and phrasal constructions that enfold communicative acts and articulate equivalence between cultures. The exclusive and collective focus on the translation volumes presents a specific mode of analogy for individual and collective experiences of being moved into a new formal space and learning the way its language works to profitable cooperative ends.

Name dc:type.qualificationname

phd

Level dc:type.qualificationlevel

doctoral

Grantor dc:publisher.institution

National University of Ireland Maynooth

Year dc:date.issued

2019

Author dc:creator

• Peart, Jessica

Language dc:language

en