The Novel, Digressions and Translation–Middlemarch in French
This article offers a survey of the issues raised by the French translation and reception of George Eliot’s novels in France. Through our concentration on Middlemarch (1872), selected for the significant gap between the French and English receptions of the novel, this study aims to isolate those Eliotian elements resisting translation. The study of the first French translation of Middlemarch by M.-J.M., published by Calmann-Lévy in 1890, shows that the intellectualism of the novel, prominent in its digressions, was inappropriate for French readers. Indeed, M.-J.M. deletes a great many important digressive passages in this translation. The translational confrontation between Middlemarch and its French version allows us to assess the position of digressions in the novel on both sides of the Channel, as well as the figure of translation in France at the end of the 19th century.