Robertson, Nicole Freya; (2019) Arthur Schnitzler in Great Britain. An examination of power and translation. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

This thesis explores the dissemination of Arthur Schnitzler’s dramatic works in Great Britain, from the end of the nineteenth century to the present day. Analysis of published translations, critical reviews, correspondence and unpublished drafts contributes to a hitherto largely neglected field of scholarship. Traces of the control exercised by the author, his son and their various agents in the process of preparing English translations for British audiences highlight the multi-layered authorship discernible in the performed or published text. The first chapter sets out in detail the theoretical and historical contexts within which the research was carried out, an expansive exercise by virtue of the cross-disciplinary nature of the project. The second chapter begins the chronological journey with a consideration of Liebelei (1895) in London between 1896 and 1920. Crucially, this was a period during which Schnitzler actively sought to control and profit from the spread of his work in Vienna and beyond. The third chapter charts the posthumous power of the writer’s estate, via Schnitzler’s son, Heinrich, up to the expiry of copyright in 1982. Anatol (1893) provides the ideal vehicle for interrogating Heinrich Schnitzler’s dedicated but often frustrated efforts to unpick prevalent myths surrounding Schnitzler and his work. The fourth chapter examines the genesis of Tom Stoppard’s ‘versions’ of Das weite Land (1911) and Liebelei, which were produced at the National Theatre in 1979 (Undiscovered Country) and 1986 (Dalliance) respectively and represent a moment of arrival for Schnitzler in Britain. The productions effectively bridge the point at which the corpus fell out of copyright, allowing a comparison that demonstrates the greater liberties translators and adaptors exercise when unrestrained by an authorial figure. In the fifth chapter three twenty-first-century adaptations of Reigen (1900) disclose how medically and philosophically inflected themes intimated in Schnitzler’s original material are re-invigorated in the post-copyright age.

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