https://orcid.org/0009-0005-1025-6733
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Yunjing Ouyang, Prismatic Jane Eyre: Close-Reading a World Novel Across Languages. Ed. by Matthew Reynolds, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 61, Issue 1, January 2025, Pages 93–94, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqae087
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This collaborative volume edited by Matthew Reynolds delves into the complexities that arise when an iconic literary text like Jane Eyre traverses geographies, times, languages and cultures. Jane Eyre has been translated into over six hundred versions in more than sixty different languages. To comprehend this vast phenomenon, Reynolds proposes the application of a prismatic approach developed in his previous edited collection, Prismatic Translation (2020). This approach argues that translation yields multiple texts, and it places translation at the forefront of literary circulation. Employing close and collaborative reading, the current volume offers insights into the differences, interconnections and intricacies involved in a world novel.
Prismatic Jane Eyre comprises eight chapters and seventeen accompanying essays. Chapter 1 distinguishes translations from other Jane Eyre-related texts. Reynolds defines a translation as ‘a whole work which stands in a particular relationship to another whole work’ (p. 29), encompassing not only full translations, but also abridgments, retranslations and translations of translations. Each new translation establishes a connection to the existing world of Jane Eyre while simultaneously creating momentum for future translations. Chapter 2 explores the multilingual aspect of the source text and its translations. As shown in the four subsequent essays which address the contexts of India, Italy, France and the Arabic world, the languages into which the source text is translated and, indeed, the source text itself, might be plural and variable over time and across regions and nationalities.
