History's Borrowed Languages: Emily Brontë, Karl Marx, and the Novel Of 1848

Abstract

Abstract:This essay reconsiders the place of 1848 in literary history by juxtaposing Emily Brontë's diverse strategies for incorporating and translating provincial dialects in Wuthering Heights (1847) with Karl Marx's comments on language and revolution around 1848. I first situate Brontë's interest in provincialisms within a longer history of debates over vernacular politics, before turning to Marx's metaphors of revolution as language learning and translation failure in The Eighteenth Brumaire (1852). Brontë's own use of interpolated tales and borrowed, stolen speech leads to a reflection on the ethics and politics of translation in a provincial and imperial context.