The influence of memory and life experiences on the rewriting of the Bible: agency as a(n) (un)conscious feature in (re)translation

Resumo

This paper analyzes how the Catholic Bible has been (re)translated in a particular creative writing process. The case study is Colleen Carroll Campbell's autobiographical work My Sisters the Saints: A Spiritual Memoir, in which specific biblical excerpts are integrated into the authorial discourse. The relation between translation and memory will be crucial in this analysis: on the one hand, the author was raised in a strong Catholic environment in which reciting the Bible was a daily habition the other,the biblical verses were conveyed in such a way as "to get the right feel",i.e. to accord with the narrative as a whole.This paper focuses upon the notion of agency to examine how personal experiences can determine the way an author chooses to (re)translate such "authoritative" texts as biblical verses,and the possible reasons and effects of the options taken to analyse the contours of the rewriting pursued.