Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature in Middle Eastern Languages

Download or read book Nineteenth-Century U.S. Literature in Middle Eastern Languages written by Jeffrey Einboden and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2013-05-20 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A transnational study of the American Renaissance which explores the literary circulation of Middle Eastern translations of 19th-century U.S. literature. In a pioneering approach to classic U.S. Literature, Jeffrey Einboden traces the global afterlives of literary icons from Washington Irving to Walt Whitman and analyses 19th-century American authors as they now appear in Arabic, Hebrew and Persian translation. Crossing linguistic, cultural and national boundaries, Middle Eastern renditions of U.S. texts are interrogated as critical readings and illuminating revisions of their American sources. Why does Moby-Dick both invite and resist Arabic translation? What are the religious and aesthetic implications of re-writing Leaves of Grass in Hebrew? How does rendering The Scarlet Letter into Persian transform Hawthorne's infamous symbol? Uncovering the choices and changes made by prominent Middle Eastern translators, this study is the first to reveal the significance of 'orienting' American classics, dem