The Afterlife of Texts in Translation : Understanding the Messianic in Literature

__The Afterlife of Texts in Translation: Understanding the Messianic in Literature__ reads Walter Benjamin’s and Jacques Derrida’s writings on translation as suggesting that texts exist within a process of continual translation. Understanding Benjamin’s and Derrida’s concept of ‘afterlife’ as ‘overliving’, this book proposes that reading Benjamin’s and Derrida’s writings on translation in terms of their wider thought on language and history suggests that textuality itself possesses a ‘messianic’ quality. Developing this idea in relation to the many rewritings and translations of __Don Quijote__, particularly the multiple rewritings by Jorge Luis Borges, Edmund Chapman asserts that texts consist of a structure of potential for endless translation that continually promises the overcoming of language, history and textuality itself. Front Matter ....Pages i-viii Introduction (Edmund Chapman)....Pages 1-14 Afterlife (Edmund Chapman)....Pages 15-35 The Overtext (Edmund Chapman)....Pages 37-56 Language, Judgement, Colonialism (Edmund Chapman)....Pages 57-70 The Messianic (Edmund Chapman)....Pages 71-96 Pierre Menard, Messianic Translator (Edmund Chapman)....Pages 97-115 Conclusion: Overliving and the Encounter with the Other (Edmund Chapman)....Pages 117-126 Back Matter ....Pages 127-140