Stranger Forms: Translating the Unusual and Minor of Early Modernity (ACLA 2021)
While canonical works like Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra’s Don Quixote have enjoyed rich histories of translation, minor texts rarely see as much activity. Even for famous authors, unusual forms may not see the light of day at all. Take Cervantes’ own entremeses, for example: a kind of theatrical interlude prevalent in Golden Age Spain, these short texts have attracted only a handful of translations compared to the Quixote’s hundreds. Carrying out the author’s own biting remark that he wrote dramatic pieces never to be dramatized, the lack of translation only reinforces the already problematic centering of canonical texts. Unavailability across languages ingrains the marginal status of other works and, with them, the marginal figures they represent.