Peart, Jessica
(2019)
Inter-subjectivity and intra-communality in Ciaran Carson’s Poetic Translations.
PhD thesis, National University of Ireland Maynooth.
Abstract
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.
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