(Peri)Textuality and a Skyscraper of Footnotes: Alphonse Daudet’s La Doulou as Translated by Julian Barnes

Abstract

Abstract Drawing loosely on text linguistics, Gérard Genette’s classic works on paratextuality, as well as a number of fairly recent concerns in Translation Studies (e.g. paratranslation, translator’s habitus, translator’s visibility), the present article deals with a collection of notes by Alphonse Daudet published posthumously (1930) as La Doulou, and particularly with its best-known English version, In the Land of Pain, signed by Julian Barnes (2002). The translator counterbalances the inherent deficiencies of Daudet’s fragmentary text by making the most of paratextual patronage (he writes an introduction, two afterwords and 64 footnotes in order to turn Daudet’s notes into a proper book).