On First Looking into Arden’s Goethe: Adaptations and Translations of Classical German Plays for the Modern English Stage

Translations and adaptations have been generally neglected by literary criticism, and scholarly work on this topic is rare. Professor Mengel’s pioneering critical study of ten translations of classical German plays by contemporaryand distinguished English dramatists - including Bond, Mortimer and Stoppard - answers a real need in literary research and constitutes a breakthrough in scholarship and criticism. In his introduction, Mengel makes use of new tendencies in translation theory and outlines his descriptive approach, which avoids the pitfalls of traditional translation criticism and allows him to do justice to adaptations and translations as ‘derived’ genres. He also pays meticulous attention to the texts themselves, and by close comparison of the source text and target text he pinpoints crucial linguistic, literary and cultural differences; these, he argues, should be taken as the starting point fortranslation analysis, enabling greater understanding of different cultures and communication between them, which paradoxically the notion of ‘faithful translation’ can discourage. The book will be of interest to students and scholars concerned with English and German drama, with translation theory and with drama translation, and to the comparatist specializing in German/English literary relations. EWALD MENGEL is Professor of English Literature atthe University of Bayreuth, Germany.