Translation and Philological Fantasy in H. Rider Haggard's She

The ruins of Kôr with their six-thousand-year-old script offer a philological fantasy for the linguist-explorers of H. Rider Haggard's novel She. This article takes a linguistic view of Haggard's work, examining the translational and philological paradigms at the heart of She and its sequels. Using the logic of translation theory and linguistic history, it argues that Haggard channels anxieties over translatio imperii (the transfer of imperial power) through the reverse translation scenario in which Ayesha—who might represent the fantasy of a New Woman philologist—proposes to translate bodies as well as texts.