History as a Translation of the Past

Case Studies from the West

Luigi Alonzi

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781350338210
• eBook ISBN: 9781350338234
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Historiography
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This volume considers how the act through which historians interpret the past can be understood as one of epistemological and cognitive translation. The book convincingly argues that words, images, and historical and archaeological remains can all be considered as objects deserving the same treatment on the part of historians, whose task consists exactly in translating their past meanings into present language. It goes on to examine the notion that this act of translation is also an act of synchronization which connects past, present, and future, disrupting and resetting time, as well as creating complex temporalities differing from any linear chronology. Using a broad, deep interpretation of translation, History as a Translation of the Past brings together an international cast of scholars working on different periods to show how their respective approaches can help us to better understand and translate the past in the future.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• List of contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Translating the past
• 1 Herodotus translating the past
• 2 Translation and temporalities in classical reception histories: Narratives, genres, forms and the agency of translators
• 3 Flesh made word: Translational processes in the production of the synoptic gospels
• 4 The historian’s dilemma: Domestication or foreignizing?
• 5 ‘Chance’ in Max Weber’s later writings
• 6 ‘We politicians’: Translation, rhetoric and conceptual change
• 7 Translated history and historical time: Transtemporal understandings of Greek and Roman concepts
• 8 ‘Just ask the stones’: Eco-translation, natural history and geomedia
• 9 The historian as translator of the past
• Name Index
• Imprint