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SUMMARY:‘The History of Authenticity: aka the 19th-century Western origi
 ns of the “original”'  - Clare Foster (University of Cambridge)
DTSTART:20130509T161500Z
DTEND:20130509T173000Z
UID:TALK42867@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:32808
DESCRIPTION:In so far as it implies a recognisable 'original' worth repeat
 ing\, the concept of 'adaptation'\, as popularly understood\, suggests a h
 ierarchical view of textual relations. It operates as a paradox\, invoking
  the assumptions of translation ('as close to the original as possible') w
 hile simultaneously functioning as the term of choice to announce its effe
 ctive absence. This paradox has a fundamental relationship to the conteste
 d concept of theatre as the rendering of a 'text'. According to Barabra Be
 ll\, the concept of adaptation as we think of it today begins with the fir
 st stage rendering of Scott’s Waverly novels. This paper explores how su
 ch a concept of adaptation/translation appears to be highly particular to 
 the West and the nineteenth-century: ‘...concepts of originality\, autho
 rship...the translator’s subservience to the author\, [and] closer adher
 ence to the original…are western imports (Wakayabashi 2011:27). It looks
  at the advent of the authentic performance text in late nineteenth-centur
 y England (Greek drama and Shakespeare\, 1880-90) drawing a distinction be
 tween this and earlier romantic ideas of the authentic or original\, and s
 uggests the links between this later concept and the mid-century advent of
  technologies of mass reproduction (cheap printing\, tableaux vivants etc)
  and the massively expanded access to knowledge they\, and urban industria
 lisation\, made possible. This later scientific sense of the authentic\, I
  argue\, is briefly a democratising and progressive assertion of authority
  by newly educated and previously excluded middle-class groups. I suggest 
 this may be a factor in its marked endurance in anglophone theatrical trad
 itions\, a hagiography of the original text which still operates as a (now
  conservatively-identified) force today. By tracing the links between the 
 emergence of this sense of the authentic and the concept of 'adaptation'\,
  I attempt to shed light on confused contemporary criticisms of reperforme
 d 'classics'. 
LOCATION:Classics Faculty\, Room G.21
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