When going too far is going just far enough: Appropriation, parody and adaptation in Lydia Davis’short stories

In Lydia Davis’ Can’t and Won’t, out of the 120 short stories, 14 are appropriations and translations of Flaubert’s letters to his friend and mistress, Louise Colet, during part of the time he was writing Madame Bovary. Appropriation of the works of others is a constant in Davis’ oeuvre, as is the theme of translating and translators. Her attention to language is such that the simple modification of a prepositional phrase or even a punctuation mark can transform the works she is appropriating and bestow upon them a new genre. All of Davis’s writing is infused with the fine eye and attuned ear of the translator, giving an additional urgency to a form that, because of the very great concision that is specific to short-short fiction, is already infused with its own distinct tension. Davis’ attention to language has been honed by her work as a translator, and many of the questions that a translator is called upon to answer in their task of giving voice to a text in a foreign language find a resounding echo in her short stories. Even though appropriation must be appraised with different criteria than that applied to translation, an examination of Davis’ work demonstrates how much they share. Davis’ specific attention to language has become a key tool in her appropriation not only of Flaubert’s letters but in her appropriation of other authors as well.