Humphrey Tonkin

Maria Esposito Frank

If it is bilingualism that transfers information and ideas from culture to culture, it is the translator who systematizes and generalizes this process. The translator serves as a mediator of cultures. In this collection of essays, based on a conference held at the University of Hartford, a group of individuals  professional translators, linguists, and literary scholars  exchange their views on translation and its power to influence literary traditions and to shape cultural and economic identities. The authors explore the implications of their views on the theory and craft of translation, both written and oral, in an era of unsettling globalizing forces.

The Translator as Mediator of Cultures

Timothy G. Reagan

What is the future of languages in an increasingly globalized world? Are we moving toward the use of a single language for global communication, or are there ways of managing language diversity at the international level? Can we, or should we, maintain a balance between the global need to communicate and the maintenance of local and regional identities and cultures? What is the role of education, of language rights, of language equality in this volatile global linguistic mix? A group of leading scholars in sociolinguistics and language policy examines trends in language use across the world to find answers to these questions and to make predictions about likely outcomes. Highlighted in the discussion are, among other issues, the rapidly changing role of English, the equally rapid decline and death of small languages, the future of the major European languages, the international use of constructed languages like Esperanto, and, not least, the question of what role applied scholarship can and should play in mapping and influencing the future.

Language in the 21st Century

Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene is among the most important literary products of the Elizabethan age, and the vast sweep of its moral, political and social concerns tells us more about the age than any other work. This volume, first published in 1989, offers detailed readings of each of the poem’s seven books, along with introductory chapters on Spenser’s career, and the roots of the poem in the English and continental traditions. Humphrey Tonkin pays particular attention to the work’s political and cultural role and its contribution to the development of Elizabethan ideology. A comprehensive analysis, this reissue will be of particular value to literature students and academics alike.

Humphrey Tonkin

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