«THE MAID OF THE MILL’S TREACHERY» BY J.W. GOETHE: A GERMAN VERSION OF THE FRENCH ROMANCE
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Abstract
The article provides a comparative analysis of Goethe's two translations of the French romance by an unidentified author. In Goethe's works the story of the cunning beauty’s treachery exists in two versions – as an independent piece of a ballad cycle about a young man in love with a charming miller’s daughter, and as a romance, which is performed by the heroine of the story within a story from the novel "Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship". Particular attention is paid to the semantic transformations introduced by Goethe in the original translation. It is these that made it possible to incorporate the ballad into the artistic world of the novel. Goethe's version of the romance, embedded into the mad wanderer’s mouth, is noted to differ from the original translation in its heightened didacticism. This brings it closer to the narrative strategy of a cautionary tale centred on the general laws of life, which the unfaithful lover must cognize at the cost of his own galling experience. On the contrary, the values and senses of the worldview in the novel engage into a polemic with its constituent song. The main plot of the story within a story disputes the relevancy of the deceived girlfriend's claim to absolute fidelity hidden in the revised translation of the romance.
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References
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