Rediscovering Rubén Darío through Translation

A long overdue examination of Rubn Daro''s multilingual work and influences alongside the contexts and politics of canonization in world literature. Rediscovering Rubn Daro through Translation addresses the peculiar obscurity of Daro by asking these questions: How can one of the most important writers of a major world language be almost entirely unknown in the English-speaking world? How is it that other writers of the same language (e.g. Lorca or Garca Mrquez) achieve widespread recognition in the anglophone world while he remains unnoticed? What role does translation play in this? What can it tell us about the way in which world literature is articulated? Carlos F. Grigsby approaches Daro''s oeuvre through translation. In doing so he explores not only the place of Daro in the translation of Spanish American literature into English but also the place of translation in Daro''s own writing. The result is a double-sided painting as it were: the recto is titled Translation in Daro and the verso Daro in Translation. This book challenges the field of world literature by revealing some of the biases present in its representation of Spanish American literature. It adopts a multilingual framework - chiefly using English Spanish French and to a lesser degree Latin and Catalan - in analyzing Daro''s writing alongside that of his contemporaries. As a result it reveals the multilingualism of Daro''s own writing opening new avenues for the study of his work and of Spanish American modernismo more generally.