Le péritexte des traductions anglaises du discours sur les sciences et les arts de Jean-Jacques Rousseau: la voix énarrative du traducteur

Building on a Genettian paratextual framework, this study explores a typology of the functions that define the Translator’s voice in eighteenth-century British translations of philosophical discourse. In appropriating the original text, this voice assumes a number of hermeneutic functions that underpin what will be identified as the translator’s « enarrative » mediation of the source text. The case analysed is the translation of Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Discours sur les Sciences et les Arts (1751), the work that launched the author’s reputation in the Republic of Letters. Four English translations of the discourse – by Bowyer (1751), Wynne (1752), an anonymous author (1760) and Kenrick (1767) – were published in the course of the author’s lifetime. The functions of enarrative voice will be traced in two peritextual instances, viz. the title page and the translator’s preface, and will be categorized as meta-discursive, evaluative, argumentative and extra-diegetic. Trying to emulate the eloquence of the original, the translators oscillate between expressing their perplexity and their fascination towards its views, notably in their own prefaces, which qualify the univocality of the text the reader is about to read. Together the instances of Translator’s voice provide a discursive record of the contemporary reception of Rousseau’s ideas in Britain