ΑΝΑΚΟΙΝΩΣΕΙΣ ΜΕΤΑΠΤΥΧΙΑΚΩΝ

The PhD position open to both home and international candidates with knowledge of at least one language other than English, and with an academic background in Modern Languages, English Studies, Comparative Literature, World Literature, Translation Studies, Intercultural Studies, and/or any other related areas.

The PhD position is linked to the project Translating Burgess | Burgess Translating and has been funded by the AHRC NWCDTP CDA Award as part of the collaboration with the Manchester-based International Anthony Burgess Foundation. It a offers a unique opportunity for the student to not only advance their research and archive skills, but also work on a series of public-facing initiatives related to an accompanying multilingual exhibition project.

The deadline for complete applications is 28 February, 2025 (midnight, GMT). See more information about the project and on how to apply here: https://www.findaphd.com/phds/project/translating-burgess-burgess-translating/?p180561

If you have any questions about the application or the project, please contact Dr Kasia Szymanska at kasia.szymanska@manchester.ac.uk. 

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Translating Burgess | Burgess Translating

This project will examine the role that translation, interlingual exchanges and global publishing played in the creative work of the British author Anthony Burgess, born in Manchester, during his lifetime but also how it has continuously shaped his international image in recent years. Throughout his life, Burgess developed an interest in modern languages, he published literary translations, collaborative translations (with his life partner and Italian linguist Liana Burgess), and film subtitles, and exchanged extensive correspondence with his translators and publishing agents, both in English as well as other (sometimes invented) languages. At the same time, his writing has entered the global circulation through translations and adaptations into multiple languages across the world – with Chinese and Arabic listed among the most recent ones.

The project will address this gap by working closely with the Manchester-based International Anthony Burgess Foundation, whose unique archive holds extensive and unexamined translation-related materials. The doctoral student will conduct archival research into correspondence between the author, his translators, publishers and literary agents. The doctoral project will be hosted at the Centre of Translation and Intercultural Studies (CTIS) at the University of Manchester, which is part of the multilingual and interdisciplinary department of Modern Languages and Cultures, enabling significant flexibility regarding the candidate’s language profile and disciplinary background, and offering space for the student to co-shape their doctoral project in a preferred direction.

Combining critical approaches from translation studies, world literature, modern languages, and English studies, the project seeks to investigate the following research questions:

1. In what ways do Burgess's unexplored translation activities and conscious efforts to connect with global audiences shed new light on our understanding of his original writing in English and other aspects of his creative work? Could Burgess's novels, his experimentation with interlingual material as well as intercultural negotiations with his translators be approached through the lens of world literature? Can his practice be seen as a case of “born translated” literature (Walkowitz 2015) which anticipates translation and/or is written with translation in mind?
2. To what extent can Burgess’s unexamined correspondence and various forms of mediations with his translators and publishing agents inform our understanding of the role that different “agents of translation” play in the global circulation of works (Sapiro 2008, Milton and Badia 2009) as well as reveals the relevance of translation for the global history of publishing and book history (cf. Colombo 2019)? Can we discuss the Foundation’s ambassadorial role and practice of promoting Burgess’s writing globally in terms of “translation patronage” (Bai 2023, cf. Lefevere 1992), an institutional and economic infrastructure for supporting and proliferating translation?
3. In terms of translation studies methodology, could the archival research on Burgess' materials related to translation be informed by the recent "archival turn" in the discipline (Cordingley and Hersant 2021; Woods 2022)? What new questions, methodological lenses, and research tools may need to be considered?
4. In what way do contemporary readers connect to Burgess’s work in multilingual reading communities across the world? Does its reception and global circulation inevitably lead to the unequal nature of translation exchanges (Frassen and Giselinde 2015) or can the centre-periphery dynamic between the global Anglophone publishing and the dominated nations in the contemporary constellations of world literature (cf. Casanova 2007) be avoided?

Depending on their individual language expertise and academic trajectory, the doctoral student may also choose to be involved in one or more of the following areas:

• assisting the Foundation’s archivist in cataloguing the uncatalogued archival correspondence in Italian, French, Spanish and other languages (92 folders of or box-listed literary manuscripts/typescripts in languages other than English),
• examining Liana Burgess’ Italian translations of her husband’s novels The Malayan Trilogy and The End of the World News as well as Liana and Anthony Burgess’s collaborative translation into Italian of his Blooms of Dublin (including the song lyrics and the play text) in the context of relevant correspondence between them stored in the Foundation’s archives;
• exploring in the form of case studies and close-readings the following of Burgess’ own translations (or subtitles) from French, Russian, Greek and Italian, among others (cf. Biswell 2005: 366-387): for example, Anthony Burgess’ translations of Giuseppe Gioachino Belli’s sonnets in Roman dialect entitled in his work ABBA ABBA combing fiction, poetry and translation published in a new edition by Manchester University Press (Burgess 2019), his verse and prose translations of theatre plays Molière’s The Miser (from French) and Alexander Griboyedov’s Chatsky (from Russian) published for the first time only recently under the titles: Chatsky: The Importance of Being Stupid and Miser, Miser!, respectively (Burgess 2023); his audiovisual translation (subtitles) of French comedy Cyrano de Bergerac, directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau (1990) and starring Gérard Depardieu, later published in a book format (Rostand 1991);
• examining a series of translations and retranslations/multiple translations (where available) of one or more of Burgess’ works into a given language (or more languages) as a case study supporting the overall argument about the global circulation of Burgess’ literary output; it is worth noting that these materials are all accessible either through the Foundation’s archives (134 articles and reviews in languages other than English) and/or in the University of Manchester’s main library as the Foundation has supplied the library with duplicates and extra copies of translations of Burgess’ novels into multiple languages; 
• examining the link between translation and adaptation in the intermedial and international transmission of Burgess’ works with special reference to translation for stage, film, opera, audiobooks, radio programmes, and any other forms of performances in various languages across the world;
• developing an integrated output for the Foundation’s website (a brief overview of the translation-related correspondence and further relevant materials held in the archives) to feed into the ongoing project of preparing a critical edition of Burgess’s correspondence which extends beyond the duration of this project;
• any other preferred form of textual or contextual analysis of the translation-related materials from the Foundation’s holdings.

Besides advancing their archival and research skills, the doctoral student will participate in the ongoing project of creating an in-situ multilingual exhibition dedicated to the global reception of Burgess’s novel A Clockwork Orange in translation. Co-curated by Kasia Szymanska and the Foundation, the exhibition (under the working title: A Global Clockwork Orange) aims to engage the city of Manchester’s multilingual reading communities to respond to the cosmopolitan potential of Burgess’s best-known novel through translations, multilingual recordings and performances.

Selected bibliography:

• Bai, Liping. 2023. "Translating Chinese culture into English: from sole patronage to joint patronage." Literary Translation Research in China, edited by Roberto A. Valdeón & Youbin Zhao. London: Routledge, 45-57.
• Biswell, Andrew. 2005. The Real Life of Anthony Burgess. London: Picador.
• Burgess, Anthony. 2019. ABBA ABBA. Edited by Paul Howard. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Burgess, Anthony. 2023. Chatsky & Miser, Miser! Two Plays by Anthony Burgess. Edited by Andrew Biswell. London: Salamander Street Limited
• Casanova, Pascale. 2007. The World Republic of Letters, translated by M.B. DeBevoise. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press.
• Colombo, Alice. 2019. “Intersections between Translation and Book History: Reflections and New Directions”. Comparative Critical Studies 16, 147-160.
• Cordingley, Anthony and Patrick Hersant. 2021. “Translation archives: an introduction”. Meta 66: 9-27.
• Franssen, Thomas and Giselinde Kuipers, eds. 2015. Sociology of Literature in the Early 21st Century: Away from the Centre Cultural Sociology. Special issue of Cultural Sociology 9(3).
• Lefevere, André. 1992. Translation, rewriting and the manipulation of literary fame. London: Routledge.
• Milton, John and Paul Bandia, eds. 2009. Agents of Translation. Manchester: John Benjamins Publishing.
• Rostand, Edmond. 1991. Cyrano de Bergerac. Translated by Anthony Burgess. London: Nick Hern Books.
• Sapiro, Giselle. 2008. ‘Translation and the Field of Publishing’, Translation Studies 1(2): 154–166.
• Walkowitz, Rebecca. 2015. Born Translated. The Contemporary Novel in an Age of World Literature. Columbia: Columbia University Press.
• Woods, Michelle. 2022. “Translator memory and archives,” The Routledge Handbook of Translation and Memory, ed. Sharon Deane-Cox and Anneleen Spiessens. London: Routledge: 325-339.