Agnès Whitfield

Agnès Whitfield is a full professor in the Department of English Studies at York University (Toronto, Canada). She is a specialist in Canadian and Quebec literature and a translator, she is interested in the theory and practice of translation, as well as the essential contribution of literary translators to intercultural dialogue. Her recent research focuses on various notions (plurivocality, multiple otherness and creativity) which, by countering the often homogenizing effects of translation, can create and strengthen open and respectful spaces for exchange. She has published over eighty scientific articles and twelve books, including two collections of poetry. A visiting professor at universities in Canada (McGill, Ottawa and Carleton) and abroad (Bologna and Mainz), she is the founding director of the international translation collection "Vita Traductiva", and an associate member of the TRACT research group at the Sorbonne Nouvelle.

The project

Title: The international influence of French surrealism: translational issues

"A fluid movement with difficult-to-define contours, bringing together a wide variety of practices, surrealism offers a particularly fertile field of study for translatology. Through its questioning of language, its reconceptualization of the subject and its multidisciplinary approach, among other things, it opens up new perspectives on the objectives and modalities of the translation process, as well as its aesthetic, social, epistemological and ethical implications. The multiple definitions of surrealism proposed by Breton in his first Manifesto are already blurring the stability and status of the artistic text. In the case of surrealist works, whether textual, pictorial or musical, should we translate the concept, the method, the creative positioning, or even the act of exploring a new form of reality? Can we confine ourselves to translating the letter of the text? Are works inspired by surrealism, such as those by Becket or Joyce, or by the automatist painters of Quebec, a form of translation? Is the new relationship between text and image proposed by Paul Éluard and Man Ray in Les Mains libres implicitly based on a liminal space that challenges translation? A rich vector of multiple questioning, surrealism opens up a vast field of reflection on the linguistic, semiotic and ontological - even psychophysical - boundaries of translation."

Hosting institution: Sorbonne Nouvelle

Selective Bibliography

• Poète, où te tiens-tu ? Montréal : Éditions Sémaphore, 2021.
• « The Circulation in English of Voices Theorizing Translation in French: Which Voices, When, and Why (or Why not) ». Palimpsestes 33 (automne 2019), pp. 153-169.
• « Enseigner les nouvelles de Rabindranath Tagore : altérités multiples et
• médiations esthétiques ». In Vidya Vencatesan et Christine Raguet, eds. Altérités multiples en traduction : explorations indiennes. Montréal : Éditions québécoises de l’œuvre, collection Vita Traductiva, 2020, pp. 147-169.
• « Rumo a uma virada sociocultural no Ensino da tradução: uma perspectiva canadense ». Belas Infiéis 2 (2021), pp. 1-15. Translation by Myllena Ribeiro Lacerda and Marcelo Araújo de Sales Aguiar of Agnès Whitfield, « Towards a Socio-Cultural Turn in Translation Teaching: A Canadian Perspective ». Méta 50/4 (2005).
• « Unspoken Assumptions, Deep Holes and Boundless Expectations: The Dialogical Tensions in Teaching Short Stories ». Language and Dialogue (John Benjamins). vol. 12, no. 1 (2022): 110-129. 10.1075/ld.00114.whi