A Sociocritique of Translation: Theatre and Alterity in Quebec, 1968-1988 by Annie Brisset (review)

Book Reviews The new-historicist political-correctness criticisms prove more thorny, as essayists fmd themselves accepting the premises of the criticism while defending against it. The thrust of J. Ellen Gainor's analysis of the Provincetown Players' repertory and of Judith E. Barlow's study of Lillian Hellman's Little Foxes is essentially that these are exceptions to the rule of domestic realism's anti-feminism. And by arguing that Beth Henley's women achieve, and Wendy Wasserstein's women search for resolution within the accepted social framework instead of demanding a transformation of society , Janet V. Haedicke concedes the issue. Her essay, and parts of some others, read like the Communist Party literary criticism of the 19305, attacking writers for not hewing to the party line; the possibility that Wasserstcin, for example, is criticizing the status quo by dramatizing the frustrations of women trying to find fulfillment within it, isn't considered. Inevitably a thematic collection such as this has its share of entries whose connection to the central subject is tenuous, and a couple that seem to have just tacked new introductions and conclusions' onto essentially unrelated analyses. The essays by YVOIUle Shafer (on Rachel Crothers, and really about the male establishment's failure to appreciate her), Robert F. Gross (on artifice in three social comedies), John W. Frick (with the big news that Odets used individual families to represent the experience of a class), Eric Bergesen and William W. Demastes (on the different social agendas of Amm Baraka and August Wilson), and Michael L. Quinn (on rOle-playing in Marnet) each offer insights into their subjects, but have little to say about realism. And that is perhaps a good summary comment on the book as a whole. Anyone of the essays could be fruitfully read by an undergraduate looking for help in understanding the individual playwright. But the collection as a whole offers less clarification of the general subject of realism than evidence of how such a simple concept has become such a Critically confusing one. GERALD M. BERKOWITZ, NORTHERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY ANNIE BRISSET. A Sociocritique o/Translation: Theatre and Alterity in Quebec. 19681988 . Trans. Rosalind Gill and Roger Gannon. Toronto: University of Toronto Press 1996. Pp. 238. $45.00. This is a translation of Annie Brisset's Sociocritique de fa traduction: Thetltre et alterite au Quebec (1968-88), published by Les Editions du Pre.mbule in 1990. A carefully documented. lucid and accessible study, it was awarded the Ann Saddlemyer Prize by the Association for Canadian Theatre Hislory in 1991. Its publication in a generally excellent translation does credit to the University of Toronto Press and its continuing commitment to the field of Canadian studies. Brisset sets out to analyze the relationship between translation practices and the social discourse prevailing in Quebec within one specific genre, over a period of two crucial decades. Her main tenet is that during the period 1968-88 translation of dra- Book Reviews 297 malic texts evolved rapidly to perform an explicitly ideological function, helping to define and promote the implicit values constituting that discourse, Based on a solipsistic ideology of "difference," translators sought more and more consciously to define Quebecois culture by opposition to the Other, particularly to the anglophonc and the allophone amongst them but also by opposition to European French language and literary culture. Texts generated by the Other had therefore to be filtered and adapted to reflect the nationalist, sovereigntist convictions which have predominated in intellectual circles in Quebec since De Gaulle's visit in 1967. The evidence she amasses is thoroughly convincing. Drawing upon fifteen plays rendered into Quebecois and published during the period (to be precise, only two are translations, the rest more or less free adaptations), plus some 200 unpubliShed ver· sions prepared for the seven largest theatrical companies in the province, she demon· strates the criteria that have prevailed in selection of source texts, and the translation strategies which succeed in removing all important traces of alterity in the target Ian· guage. "Ethnocentric" and "annexationist" (Brisset's terms), this solipsistic exercise "reaches successive peaks in 1969-70, 1977-78, 1981-82, and 1985- 86," coinciding with the events of October 1970, the victory...