Traduire l'ironie. L'exemple d'une œuvre romanesque de N. Kazantzaki et ses traductions française et anglaise

Abstract

This paper sets out to study the ironical effects related to morphological, rhetorical and macro-structural cues of the novel by N. Kazantzakis's Ο τελευταίος πειρασμός (1951), and then to examine the degree of their transposition in the French and English translations, carried out by Saunier (1959 La dernière tentation du Christ) and by Bien (1960 The Last Temptation of Christ) respectively. Initially, from a theoretical point of view some definitions of irony as a thought and rhetorical figure are reviewed, while a particular attention is drawn to the theoretical insights of literary irony, in relation to Kazantzakis's work and life. From an analytical, enunciative perspective, this article will endeavour to locate, classify and analyze some techniques of ironization brought into play by Kazantzakis, with a view to comparing them with their transposition in the translated texts. The study privileges a pragmatico-textual approach, which embraces the theoretical background of enunciative polyphony.