The Role of Stylistics in Writing and Translating Poetry

Abstract

We are two academics who work in literary stylistics (broadly speaking the analysis of the production, reception and evaluation of literary texts using insights from modern linguistics). We are also poets and in this article we reflect on the connection between stylistics and the writing of poetry. One of us (PagerMcClymont) is also interested in the relationship between stylistics and translation. This article therefore examines the extent to which stylistics as an academic discipline impacts on our roles in writing poetry and translation. Following brief biographical introductions, we do this by first reflecting from the perspective of stylistician-poets on four poems we have written, and then discussing how awareness of stylistic principles and frameworks helped to capture meaning and authorial style in the translation of our poems into French. The article ends with the original poems and their French translations, alongside further discussion of the relationship between language awareness, creative writing and translation.