Translation and Reception of a Victorian Author in France: the Case of George Eliot
George Eliot never enjoyed a great success in France, and it is precisely this reception phenomenon that brought me to study the French translations of her work. The Mill on the Floss, her second novel, has been translated six times into French and we examine three translations in this article: the first is by François D’Albert-Durade (1863), the second is by Lucienne Molitor (1957) and the last, by Alain Jumeau (2003). It seems that an aspect of the Eliotian prose resists translation into French. It is the multiplicity of voices in the novel that creates this resistance – among which the 19th Century English peasant sociolectal voice is the most important. By studying the voice of one character, as well as the narrative voice, this article presents a confrontation of three translations covering a period of a century and a half, thus revealing the translative journey of a Victorian novel in France.