Translating the Scandinavian Enigma: Antiquarianism and the Romantic Imagination
Antiquarianism deeply inspired the Romantic imagination. George Borrow, an unusual Romantic antiquarian and translator of Danish ballads, illuminates the connection between two contrasting aspects of antiquarianism: the focus on the factual and minute particular, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, an imagination that seeks to confront, and abide in, the mysteriousness of the past. Borrow challenges the idea that translation and enigma are antithetical concepts—that to translate implies the precondition of understanding the original, while the enigma insists upon confounding—and instead considers the two as twins. By examining Borrow in the context of eighteenth-century interest in ancient Scandinavia, English Ph.D. student Julia Noble tells an alternative story about antiquarianism, the ballad revival, and Romanticism’s engagement with the imagined past.
*Refreshments provided; all are welcome; no pre-circulated reading