Tony Harrison the Translator: “Life’s a Performance. Either Join in / Lightheartedly, or Thole the Pain”

Abstract

including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. Jacob Blakesley Tony Harrison the translator: 'Life's a performance. Either join in / lightheartedly, or thole the pain' 1 Tony Harrison is the foremost poet-playwright of modern England. As critics have said, he is 'a titaὀ amὁὀg pὁets' 2 , who has 'chaὀged the eὀtire landscape of ἐritish pὁetry' 3 έ While ώarrisὁὀ's work has been studied extensively, 4 there exists no comprehensive overview of his translation practice and ideology. For too long, his translation activity has not been seen as a vital, integral part of his oeuvre. He is not simply a British poet, but a poet who has actively engaged with poets and writers from numerous literary and cultural traditions worldwide, with a geographic and chronological breadth that has not been adequately accounted for by scholars. This essay will argue for the importance of translation in his poetic career and will show how his primarily domesticating method of translation is influenced by his poetics and ideology. In order to keep the focus on his written translations, I will concentrate solely on his interlingual translations: Aeschylus, Aristophanes, Euripides, Martial, Palladas, and Racine, not his intersemiotic translations like Prometheus. 5 1 This work was supported by a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship. I would like to thank the following people for advice with this essay: Rachel Bower, Odin Dekkers, Stella Sacchini, Chiara Sbordoni, and an anonymous reader at English Studies.