Concept of Marriage in the Translation of La Reine Margot

A Case Study

Abstract

In line with massive cultural and social transformations in nineteenth-century Iran, an authoritative translator, Mohamad Taher Mirza Eskandari, succeeded in translating a female-centered novel, La Reine Margot. In the decades leading to the constitutional movement, he introduced a translation with relative hegemonic power that managed to become an arena for articulating relatively modern ideas about the social institution of marriage and divulging the positioning of women within it. As a modern discursive practice, the translation was also launched as a platform to challenge the traditional conceptualizations of marriage. This case study used discourse analysis methodology (Fairclough, 1992) triangulated with thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2012) and comparative analysis proposed by Tymoczko (2002) and Pym (2014). It peruses to explore the strategies through which Eskandari’s 1895 Persian translation of Alexandre Dumas’ French historical novel, La Reine Margot, sought to achieve hegemony, oppose the traditional premodern discourse, and pave the way for the introduction of new ideas about marriage. It also analyzes women’s position within the translation. The main questions to answer are what strategies the translator applied to criticize and dissociate from the traditional social context and illustrate a modern concept of marriage, what aspects of marriage were foregrounded, and the implications of all this for the representation of women.