Le Proscrit, par Charlotte Smith, auteur d'Emmeline, d'Ethelinde, de Célestine, de Montalbert, des Promenades champêtres, etc. Traduit de l'anglais, sur la seconde édition, par feu L.–Antoine Marquand
Contributions
- Louis-Antoine Marquand
- translator
- Jean-Baptiste-Étienne-Élie Le Normant
- publisher
Related resources
- has translation
- The Banished Man
Held by
Notes
Although Smith's novel was published in 1794 and translated into German a year later, it was not published in France until 1803 due to the untimely death of its translator. Marquand made some changes in the text in order to reinforce his republican viewpoint and minimize Smith's regrets about the course of the Revolution. For example, where Smith describes the hero as a "gentleman", Marquand translates this as "honnete homme" to emphasize the nobility of his heart rather than his lineage. He also reduces the praise of Marie-Antoinette and adds footnotes defending French revolutionary practice where he feels Smith is unfairly criticizing the advantages brought about by the Revolution. At one point he even changes an entire scene to reconcile his political views with those of the novel transforming the hero's fanatical revolutionary brother into a repentant one, thereby placing the blame for the Terror on a handful of misguided individuals in order to maintain the Republican high ground. Smith uses the Terror to highlight the superiority of the British political system, an attitude that Marquand consistently attempts to tone down for his French republican readership.
For more on the novel's significance in representations of the French Revolution on both sides of the Channel, see Katherine Astbury, "Charlotte Smith's The Banished Man in French Translation; or the Politics of Novel-Writing During the Revolution", in 'Charlotte Smith in British Romanticism', ed. Jacqueline Labbe (Routledge, 2008)