Can the Verses of a Black and Enslaved Poet be White and Free?

Translating Phillis Wheatley

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17851/2238-3824.29.2.73-96

Keywords:

Phillis Wheatley, translation, poetry

Abstract

This article presents a translation of a poem by Phillis Wheatley Peters, an eighteenth-century African American poet. The translation approach takes into account the circumstances of Wheatley’s life. We first briefly recount the life story of Phillis Wheatley and present a translation of one of her most famous poems “On being brought from Africa to America”. We argue for a translation approach that does not detach itself from the sociohistorical context of the author, nor is too tied to metric or tradition. We propose a translation approach that listens (Derrida) to the spoken silences (Bakhtin) of the poem and the history of Phillis Wheatley in a loving dialogue (Carrascosa) with the author, thus, enabling us to subvert traditions and problematize fixed forms.

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Author Biographies

Adrian Clarindo, Universidade de São Paulo (USP) | São Paulo | SP | BR

Adrian Clarindo é doutorando em Estudos Linguísticos e Literários em Inglês na Universidade de São Paulo.

Luciana Carvalho Fonseca, Universidade de São Paulo (USP) | São Paulo | SP | BR

Professora Doutora no Departamento de Letras Modernas da Universidade de São Paulo, onde atua na graduação e na pós-graduação. Está vinculada a dois programas de pós-graduação: Letras Estrangeiras e Tradução (PPG-LETRA) e Estudos Linguísticos e Literários em Inglês (ELLI).

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Published

2024-08-27

How to Cite

Clarindo, A., & Fonseca, L. C. (2024). Can the Verses of a Black and Enslaved Poet be White and Free? Translating Phillis Wheatley. Caligrama: Revista De Estudos Românicos, 29(2), 73–96. https://doi.org/10.17851/2238-3824.29.2.73-96