The Portable Bunyan : : A Transnational History of The Pilgrim's Progress / / Isabel Hofmeyr.

• VerfasserIn: Hofmeyr, Isabel,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2018]; ©2004
• Year of Publication: 2018
• Language: English
• Series: Translation/Transnation ; 7
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

How does a book become an international bestseller? What happens to it as it is translated into different languages, contexts, and societies? How is it changed by the intellectual environments it encounters? What does the transnational circulation mean for its reception back home? Exploring the international life of a particularly long-lived and widely traveled book, Isabel Hofmeyr follows The Pilgrim's Progress as it circulates through multiple contexts--and into some 200 languages--focusing on Africa, where 80 of the translations occurred. This feat of literary history is based on intensive research that criss-crossed among London, Georgia, Kingston, Bedford (John Bunyan's hometown), and much of sub-Saharan Africa. Finely written and unusually wide-ranging, it accounts for how The Pilgrim's Progress traveled abroad with the Protestant mission movement, was adapted and reworked by the societies into which it traveled, and, finally, how its circulation throughout the empire affected Bunyan's standing back in England. The result is a new intellectual approach to Bunyan--one that weaves together British, African, and Caribbean history with literary and translation studies and debates over African Christianity and mission. Even more important, this book is a rare example of a truly worldly study of "world literature"--and of the critical importance of translation, both linguistic and cultural.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- CONTENTS -- LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS -- PROLOGUE -- INTRODUCTION. Portable Texts: Bunyan, Translation, and Transnationality -- PART ONE. BUNYAN IN THE PROTESTANT ATLANTIC -- 1. The Congo on Camden Road -- 2. Making Bunyan Familiar in the Mission Domain -- 3. Translating Bunyan -- 4. Mata's Hermeneutic: Internationally Made Ways of Reading Bunyan -- PART TWO. BUNYAN,THE PUBLIC SPHERE, AND AFRICA -- 5. John Bunyan Luthuli: African Mission Elites and The Pilgrim's Progress -- 6. Dreams, Documents, and Passports to Heaven: African Christian Interpretations of The Pilgrim's Progress -- 7. African Protestant Masculinities in the Empire: Ethel M. Dell, Thomas Mofolo, and Mr. Great-heart -- 8. Illustrating Bunyan -- 9. Bunyan in the African Novel -- PART THREE. POST-BUNYAN -- 10. How Bunyan Became English -- CONCLUSION. Lifting the Tollgates -- APPENDIX 1. Bunyan Translations by Language -- APPENDIX 2. A Social Profile of Bunyan Translators -- NOTES -- BIBLIOGRAPHY -- INDEX