Translation and the Arts in Modern France sits at the intersection of transposition, translation, and ekphrasis, finding resonances in these areas across periods, places, and forms. Within these contributions, questions of colonization, subjugation, migration, and exile connect Benin to Brittany, and political philosophy to the sentimental novel and to film. Focusing on cultural production from 1830 to the present and privileging French culture, the contributors explore interactions with other cultures, countries, and continents, often explicitly equating intercultural permeability with representational exchange. In doing so, the book exposes the extent to which moving between media and codes—the very process of translation and transposition—is a defining aspect of creativity across time, space, and disciplines.

This book examines the works of four contemporary first-generation Chinese migrant writer-artists in France: François CHENG, GAO Xingjian, DAI Sijie, and SHAN Sa. They were all born in China, moved to France in their adulthood to pursue their literary and artistic ambitions, and have enjoyed the highest French and Western institutional recognitions, from the Grand Prix de la Francophonie to the Nobel Prize in Literature. They have established themselves not only as writers, but also as translators, calligraphers, painters, playwrights, and filmmakers mainly in their host country. French has become their dominant—but not only—language of literary creation (except for Gao); yet, linguistic idioms, poetic imagery, and classical thought from Chinese cultural heritage permeate their French texts and visual artworks, reflecting a strong translingual and transmedial sensibility. The book provides not only distinctive literary and artistic examples beyond existing studies of intercultural encounter, French postcolonial, and Chinese diasporic enquiries; more importantly, it formulates a theoretical model that captures the creative dynamics between the French/francophone and Chinese/sinophone spaces of articulation, thereby contributing to contemporary debates about literary and artistic production, interpretation, and circulation in the global development of comparative/world literature, as well as intermediality studies.

A brief stay in France was, for many Chinese workers and Chinese Communist Party leaders, a vital stepping stone for their careers during the cultural and political push to modernize China after World War I. For the Chinese students who went abroad specifically to study Western art and literature, these trips meant something else entirely. Set against the backdrop of interwar Paris, Paris and the Art of Transposition uncovers previously marginalized archives to reveal the artistic strategies employed by Chinese artists and writers in the early twentieth-century transnational imaginary and to explain why Paris played such a central role in the global reception of modern Chinese literature and art. While previous studies of Chinese modernism have focused on how Western modernist aesthetics were adapted or translated to the Chinese context, Angie Chau does the opposite by turning to Paris in the Chinese imaginary and discussing the literary and visual artwork of five artists who moved between France and China: the painter Chang Yu, the poet Li Jinfa, the art critic Fu Lei, the painter Pan Yuliang, and the writer Xu Xu. Chau draws the idea of transposition from music theory where it refers to shifting music from one key or clef to another, or to adapting a song originally composed for one instrument to be played by another. Transposing transposition to the study of art and literature, Chau uses the term to describe a fluid and strategic art practice that depends on the tension between foreign and familiar, new and old, celebrating both novelty and recognition—a process that occurs when a text gets placed into a fresh context.

This original and relevant book investigates the relationship between intellectual property and the visual arts in France from the 16th century to the French Revolution. It charts the early history of privilege legislation (today's copyright and patent) for books and inventions, and the translation of its legal terms by and for the image. Those terms are explored in their force of law and in relation to artistic discourse and creative practice in the early modern period. The consequences of commercially motivated law for art and its definitions, specifically its eventual separation from industry, are important aspects of the story. The artists who were caught up in disputes about intellectual property ranged from the officers of the Academy down to the lowest hacks of Grub Street. Lessons from this book may still apply in the 21st century; with the advent of inexpensive methods of reproduction, multiplication, and dissemination via digital channels, questions of intellectual property and the visual arts become important once more.

This volume is of particular relevance to literary and filmic translators, to translation theorists and to anyone with an interest in translation as an art. Throughout the majority of essays in the volume, translation is projected as a complex creative task and not as an exercise in simply re-encoding the meaning of a source text. The received superiority of the original is ultimately questioned here. The customary binary divide between original and translation or copy, and between author and translator is forcefully challenged as cinematic and literary translation is presented as an essentially creative process. Whether highlighting specific author-related problems or whether focusing on the broader issues of the ethics of translation, of cultural transmissibility or of obsolescence, the general thrust of these essays seeks to demonstrate the authorial credentials of the translator. Despite the cogent counter-arguments advanced by a minority of the contributors, the dominant discourse here is one which replaces the stereotypical, virtually anonymous translator with a high-profile, creative figure.

The French Revolution, politics and the modern nation -- French and the civilizing mission -- Paris and magnetic appeal -- France stirs up the melting pot -- France hurtles into the future.