Writing the Life of a European Cultural Mediator: Bringing Barbara Bray (1924-2010) Out of the Archives
March 3 @ 1:00 pm - 2:30 pm
DEL-dalan 2025: Seminars on ‘European’ Languages, Literatures and Cultures
Writing the Life of a European Cultural Mediator: Bringing Barbara Bray (1924-2010) Out of the Archives (Prof. Dr. Pascale Sardin, University of Bordeaux Montaigne, France)
To register, please click on the following link: https://forms.gle/QTcQRTMKEzD4ndsTA
ABSTRACT: Barbara Bray (1924-2010) was an English woman of letters who translated some hundred novels, plays, and essays from French to English and was Marguerite Duras’s preferred translator. She also collaborated with some of the most prestigious directors and playwrights of the 20th century — Harold Pinter, Samuel Beckett, Joseph Losey, and Franco Zeffirelli. In addition, she produced shows for BBC radio, was a journalist and critic, and cofounded a bilingual theatre company.
In this presentation, I propose to reflect upon what motivated me to write a literary biography of this woman of letters. I propose to highlight, in doing so, the role Bray played as a cultural mediator in the Anglophone and Francophone literary fields in the second half of the 20th century. I will focus on how she made European cultural products circulate inside and outside European borders, and the kind of “transtextual” work this involved, thus putting forward her different skills, as well as the influence she had in cultural transfers of ideas.
PRESENTER’S BIO: Pascale Sardin is Professor of English Literature and Translation Studies at the University of Bordeaux Montaigne University in France, where she teaches in the English and Theatre departments. She is the author of several books on Samuel Beckett, and has edited two volumes of the journal ‘Palimpsestes’ (Presses de la Sorbonne Nouvelle). She has just completed a literary biography of Barbara Bray, entitled “Barbara Bray, A Woman of Letters: Translator, Radio Producer, Scriptwriter, Critic, and Theatre Director” (Routledge).
Source: UPD Department of European Languages Facebook