Inimitability Versus Translatability: The Structure of Literary Meaning in Arabo-Persian Poetics

Gould, Rebecca Ruth

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Inimitability Versus Translatability: The Structure of Literary Meaning in Arabo-Persian Poetics

The Translator. Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 81-104, 2013

24 Pages Posted: 3 Mar 2013 Last revised: 16 Dec 2015

See all articles by Rebecca Ruth Gould

Rebecca Ruth Gould

School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London; Harvard University - Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies

Date Written: 2013

Abstract

Building on the multivalent meanings of the Arabo- Persian tarjama (‘to interpret’, ‘to translate’, ‘to narrate’), this essay argues for the relevance of Qur’ānic inimitability (i'jāz) to contemporary translation theory. I examine how the translation of Arabic rhetorical theory ('ilm al-balāgha) into Persian inaugurated new trends within the study of literary meaning. Finally, I show how Islamic aesthetics conceptualizes the translatability of literary texts along lines kindred to Walter Benjamin.

Keywords: Translatability, Persian, Arabic, Poetry, Walter Benjamin, Structure, Nazm, Translation, Islam, I'jaz

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Gould, Rebecca Ruth, Inimitability Versus Translatability: The Structure of Literary Meaning in Arabo-Persian Poetics (2013). The Translator. Vol. 19, No. 1, pp. 81-104, 2013, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2227546