(Re)translating James Joyce’s Ulysses : a comparative study of the two French translations and of their geneses

Joyce’s Ulysses has been translated into French twice: the first translation came out in 1929, following the publication of the original work in Paris in 1922, and the second one was published in 2004 to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Bloomsday. Both projects involved multiple translators. Based on the study of translators’ archives, this dissertation contends that the history of the French Ulysse-s is that of a century-long continuum of collaborative translation. The work produced by the successive groups of translators, revisers, editors, scholars and author highlights the potentialities contained within the Joycean text, as well as key moments in the history of its reception and of the French language and literary culture. Joyce’s book is a dense, encyclopaedic, both realist and experimental novel, and surely a challenge for translators at all times. The genetic approach provides a glimpse into their work processes and helps delineating the timelines and organizations which structured their projects and yielded the two integral French Ulysse-s, portraying them as laboratories carrying out both Joyce’s experiments and their own in translation. Comparing the genesis of the French translations of Ulysses implies attending to the multiple: multiple translations, multiple translators, multiple draft versions which, taken all together, create a kaleidoscopic macro-text. This dissertation provides an insight into this constellation of creative potentialities by sketching out each collective’s translation project and each individual’s role in the collective. Slowly focusing in from theoretical considerations, to drafting out the complex history of the collaborative (re)translations of Ulysses into French, to case studies analysing specific Joycean translation issues and the crafty solutions found by the (re)translators, this dissertation provides a constant dialogue between source and target texts, between draft and published versions, between individual and collective stances, between art and craft, creation, constraint and creativity.