French Literature Reviews - 2026

A. Lavieri, Aesthetics and Poetics of Translation
Literary Theory, Linguistics and Stylistics

Antonio Lavieri, Esthétique et poétiques du traduire
Mucchi Editore, Modena, collection Strumenti 12 / Poetica2005
ISBN : 88-7000-433-3

Excerpt from the Foreword

The studies collected in this short volume stem from a trajectory that extends from the phenomenological aesthetics of Luciano Anceschi and Emilio Mattioli's studies on translation, to Henri Meschonnic's poetics of translation and historical anthropology of language, culminating in Jean-René Ladmiral's fundamental analyses of the philosophical and epistemological challenges of translation. From the convergence of aesthetics with the poetics and specific theoretical practices of translators, writers, and writer-translators (such as Valéry, Borges, and Céline) emerges the need for a self-reflective translation-studies knowledge. This discipline must question its own theoretical fictions and philosophical traditions, thereby opening itself up to an ethics, an anthropology, and a critical, comparative, and intercultural poetics of translation. Recognizing the authorship inherent in translation and refining the metalanguages we use to analyze, describe, and understand translation, language, and literature provide a coherent foundation for both this project and this book.

CONTENTS

Foreword

Chapter I
At Work. Towards an Aesthetics of Literary Translation

Chapter II
Paul Valéry's Poetics of Translation

Chapter III
Ways of Translating Worlds

Chapter IV
Utopias of Translation. Poetics, Anthropology, Epistemocriticism

By the Same Author

A. Lavieri (ed.), La traduzione fra filosofia e letteratura/La traduction entre philosophie et littérature, L'Harmattan Italia-L'Harmattan, Turin-Paris, 2004.

In the Same Series

Ernesto Grassi
La preminenza della parola metaforica

Saverio Bettinelli
Dei geni - edited by A. Serra

Stefano Ferrari
Scrittura come riparazione: l'esempio di Proust

Stefano Ferrari
Scrittura e sogno in Franz Kafka

Franco Ballardini
Swedenborg e il falegname - Poetica, teoria e filosofia della musica in Arnold Schönberg

Emilio Mattioli
Interpretazioni dello Pseudo-Longino

Raffaele Milani
Tecniche dello sguardo

Lothar Bornscheuer
Retorica e paradigmi antropologici

Vincenzo Cocozza
Le aporie dell'oggettivismo

Emilio Mattioli
Ritmo e traduzione

Willem J. Verdenius
I principi della critica letteraria greca - edited by G. Lombardo

Antonio Lavieri's volume engages deeply with the theoretical intersections of comparative literature, philosophy, and linguistics, situating translation not merely as a linguistic transfer but as a complex aesthetic and anthropological act. By drawing on the foundational traditions of phenomenological aesthetics and historical language anthropology, the author examines how literary translation functions as an autonomous creative practice. The book investigates the self-reflective dimensions of translating through the specific literary works and theoretical insights of major writer-translators such as Paul Valéry and Jorge Luis Borges, bridging the gap between abstract epistemology and practical literary creation.

This collection serves as a valuable resource for students, researchers, and practitioners of translation studies, comparative literature, and modern philology who wish to deepen their understanding of the cultural and philosophical stakes involved in rendering texts across languages. It provides rigorous methodological tools to question established theoretical fictions and refine the metalanguages necessary for analyzing intercultural poetics. Readers interested in the ethics of translation, the status of authorship in transferred texts, and the broader epistemocritical questions of comparative literature will find this study particularly insightful for their scholarly pursuits.