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Anderson, Timothy 
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-5755-0294
(2021)
There's Something about Murray: Victorian Literary Societies and Alfred Forman's translation of Richard Wagner's 'Der Ring des Nibelungen'.
Modern Language Quarterly, 82 (3).
pp. 281-313.
ISSN 0026-7929
Abstract
Alfred Forman’s translations of Richard Wagner’s operas are often derided for their weird diction and minute imitation of German poetic devices. Forman has seemed to represent a zealous and uncritical approach to Wagner that was typical of the early London Wagner Society. But London’s literary societies were important preprofessional gatherings for the appreciation and research of vernacular literature at a time when universities restricted who could study and what could be studied. Forman contributed to other London societies and organized for them dramatic readings of Wagner’s poetry featuring Forman’s wife, Alma Murray. In making Wagner legible and audible for these societies, Forman aligned Wagner with contemporary radical poets and promoted the Ring as a political allegory. Forman’s translations, far from cranky or cultish, show how Victorian society culture affected translation practices, renewed study of poetic alliteration, and inaugurated the political interpretation of Wagner’s works.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | decadent literature,historical poetics,literary societies,richard wagner,translation,literature and literary theory ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1200/1208 |
| Faculty \ School: | Faculty of Arts and Humanities > School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing |
| Related URLs: | |
| Depositing User: | LivePure Connector |
| Date Deposited: | 09 Dec 2023 01:38 |
| Last Modified: | 13 Dec 2023 02:00 |
| URI: | https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/93918 |
| DOI: | 10.1215/00267929-9090280 |
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