Translation and literary criticism have always been interdependent. But over the past quarter century, postmodernist literary criticism and European philosophy have progressively seen translation as a key to literary theory. Marilyn Gaddis Rose shows how these approaches can also make translation a critical tool for the analysis and teaching of literature. Her discussions of individual translations illustrate the way translation reveals hidden aspects of texts, challenging readers with a provisional boundary, an interliminal space of sound, allusion and meaning. In this space readers must collaborate, criticize and rewrite the text, thus enriching their experience of literature.

Adopting a personal, occasionally intimate approach to some of the greatest literary texts, Professor Rose convincingly demonstrates that translation need not to be seen as loss or sacrifice. From the perspective adopted in this volume, literature can only gain in translation.