Barbara godard, a translator's portraitanalysing the reception of québec's roman au féminin (1960-1990) in anglophone canada

Abstract

The current dissertation is not only concerned with nourishing the Feminist Translation Studies field with an interdisciplinary perspective into Feminist Translator History. It strives for an understanding of Translation Studies, and Feminist Translation Studies in this particular case, as a cross-disciplinary space where the aims of various disciplines may converge (see Castro 2012). In the particular space of Feminist Translation/Translator History, and in line with Rundle's proposed synergies between Translation Studies and History (2014), the limitations of the so-called "discursive turn" in Feminist History" (Canning 1994) which, despite showing interest in how ideologies operate via historiographical discourse, is insufficiently familiar with the variety of Critical Discourse Analysis methodologies at our disposal (see Castro 2009). In this sense, the current thesis intends to be useful to feminist scholars across disciplines in their search for more fruitful, interdisciplinary methodologies duly integrating history, ideology, and discourse. The subject chosen for the current study is late feminist translator and scholar Barbara Godard (Toronto, 1942-2010), an agent actively participating in the Trudeau-Era's so-called "Canadianization", the establishment of a distinctively Canadian cultural ecosystem. In this particular context, higher-education institutions like York University, Godard's employer, had a leading role in the Canadian nation-making project, coincidental with the Centennial of the Confederation (1867-1967), and greatly contributed to spreading the notion of a thus-far non-existent, distinctive Canadian Literature among the population. The "Canadianization" project constitutes an interesting scenery to analyse Godard's feminist translator's agency in so far as it responds to the typical patriarchal pattern of synergetic relations between a literary polysystem and the underlying nation state's ideal concept of society. As a white settler society, Canada was far from acknowledging cultural and ethnic Otherness within its borders. What certainly worried the orchestrators of the Canadian nation-making project between the late 60s and 70s, be it politicians, scholars, or agents of the book industry in general, was therefore the growing conflict with Québec's own nation-making ideals and the resulting literary system, striving for independent cultural infrastructures. Taking the polysystem theory's analytical pattern as a point of departure, I intend to provide a sociocritical description of both the Canadian and the Québécois polysystem, in the means of better determining how Godard's feminist agency interacted with and grew out of them.