CLAS 532
May 5, 2025

Jean-Luc Godard’s Le Mépris (1963; Brigitte Bardot & Michel Piccoli)

Portfolio (revised Exercises in a single document): due before Examination #2, May 14 (10:30am)

Study Guide for Examination #2

1. Venuti, “Genealogies of Translation Theory: Schleiermacher”

• instrumental (instrumental transfer of essentialized meaning) vs. hermeneutic (interpretative, autonomous text) theories of translation: exposes contradictions of ancient to modern theorists, e.g. Nida’s pseudo-equivalence of Paul’s “holy kiss” (ἐν φιλήματι ἁγίῳ) and “hearty handshake”
  
  
• ST’s invariance (fixity) vs. variability (interpretation) where translation mediates differences between languages & cultures:
  
  “[The hermeneutic model] understands translation as interpretation of the source text, one among different and potentially conflicting interpretations, each of which varies the form, meaning, and effect of that text according to what is intelligible and interesting in the receiving culture.” (p. 488)
  
  
• translation as interpretative transformation of ST (cf. uertere), i.e. reception (meaning created at point of reception) not transfer of fixed meaning; ethical & hermeneutic translation reveals its interpretants (linguistic, theoretical, cultural, social) in prefaces, “thick” translation, critical analysis, instrumental translation mystifies & selectively reveals/conceals its interpretants
  
  La Villa Malaparte à Capri
  

2. Paul, “Homer and Cinema: Translation and Adaptation in Le Mépris” (Godard film after Alberto Moravia’s novel Il Disprezzo, 1954)

• Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt (1963): (meta)film about making film adaptation of Odyssey – is there an “essential, fixed, not constructed and contingent classic Odyssey” (Fritz Lang’s) to transfer vs. contemporary Hollywood take (Jack Palance)?
  
  
• film open-ended – highlights “rhetoric of fidelity” & essentializing readings (an “original Odyssey” in oral tradition?) vs. culturally & temporally constructed meanings
  
  
• is adaptation a separate category from translation? analagous processes of creative reception, “interpretative, culturally located acts” (p. 163)? adapatation an unnecessary axiological term measuring translation’s degree of derivation/autonomy?
  
  Paul concludes contiguous terms (complex case of intersemiotic translation, text/film):
  
  “Though not synonymous, [translation and adaptation] do form a critically productive partnership . . . framing adaptation as translation (and vice versa) should be used to illuminate the complexities of each, rather than elide them. By fully exploring this partnership in Le Mépris, the issues that confront translation of ‘the classic’ are shown to be inextricably and fascinatingly linked to those that confront adaptation of ‘the classic’.” (p. 163)
  
  Ulysses (Italian fantasy-adventure, 1954); ending
  

  

  Phaedra (dir. Jules Dassin 1962) starring Melina Mercouri and Anthony Perkins; “Love Scene”
  

3. Sarah Kane (1971-1999), Phaedra’s Love (1996): commission of Gate Theatre (new plays based on models of classical canon); regarded as Kane’s least adventurous, most naturalistic & most comic play

L: Sarah Kane (1998); R: Alexandre Cabanal, Phèdre (1880)

• “In-Yer-Face Theatre” (aka “New Brutalists”, “New Nihilists”, “Blut und Sperma”, “School of Smack and Sodomy”): rebellion against contemporary journalistic theatre/British theatre of social realism > fresh, physical & raw engagement with socio-political realties
  
  
• Kane: minimalist dialogue, visceral action, palpable ideas, honesty (“My responsibility is to the truth, however difficult that truth happens to be”)
  
  
• target culture interpretants (socio-political mediations) of Phaedra’s Love:
  
  (1) satirical view of parasitical, incestuous, corrupt Royals & celebrated tabloid lives of ennui; royal family’s dysfunction in backdrop of social & familial disruptions of Thatcher’s England
  (2) Royals as media construction, complicity of suppliers & consumers in vapid spectacle-cult (critique of late capitalism, consumer culture & alienation)
  
  
• as classical reception – Kane’s characters vis-à-vis Euripides’ & Seneca’s
  
  (1) Hippolytus: ahedonic misogynist & misanthrope (Euripdes & Seneca?); reaction to Phaedra’s “Lena, weren’t you–”
  (2) Phaedra: cf. suicide note of conflicted figure in extant Euripides (lost Hippolytos Kalyptomenos vs. Hippolytos Stephanophoros); unhappy spouse’s direct proposition, false accusation, suicide & admission onstage in Seneca
  (3) Theseus: rash action-hero
  (4) Strophe (cf. Chorus, Nurse in Euripides & Seneca)
  (5) Priest (cf. Euripides’ Aphrodite & Artemis; Anglican complicity with monarchy, “You are a guardian of [the nation’s] morals”)
  (6) Crowd (cf. Chorus)
  (7) Doctor (“Get over him”)
  
  
• “Vultures . . . If there could have been more moments like this” – Hippolytus’ onstage evisceration & BBQ in finale (aemulatio with Seneca’s grotesque ending of dysfunctional & fragmented family; “None of us are related to each other”)
  
  
• clear dividing line between translation & adaptation?
  
  
  The Skinhead Hamlet (an intralingual translation, 1981)