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Abstract
The translation and appropriation of literature from other cultures, especially from those in which Britain had a colonial interest, exercised an important influence upon poetry in Victorian Britain. To make a new argument about the nature and scope of this influence, this project examines the translation work of Edward FitzGerald, Charlotte Guest (whose translation of Welsh legends Tennyson used as a source for Idylls of the King), and Robert Browning. Broadly speaking, the activity of these translators occurred when Britain was striving to introduce and domesticate many things, including flora, fauna, and artistic and cultural creations, from places where it acted as a colonizing presence. The aim, whether implicit or explicit, of such activity was to enhance Britain through the integration of non-British elements. FitzGerald, Guest, and Browning each had complex involvement with, and each helped to define, this aim in its literary form. Their activity demonstrates that British poetry in this epoch was profoundly pervious, susceptible to historical-cultural currents arising from the territorial expansion and imperialist tensions that Britain was undergoing. New interest in Eastern civilizations, a heightened sense of racial identity associated with the ascendance of Welsh nationalism, and uncertainty about the viability of empire affected the language, tone, form, and themes of Victorian poetry. To advance this argument, "Literary Translators and Victorian Poetry" draws on the school of translation theory that privileges study of the reception, identity, and life of translations within their new literary cultures.
