Translating Claire de Duras: the Rediscovery and Translation of a Major French Writer

Launching Claire de Duras: Ourika, Edouard, and Olivier (Oxford University Press).Join us on Thursday 29 October 2026 for an evening with the scholar who rediscovered much of Claire de Duras's work, and the translator and editor of the OUP edition that includes the first English translation of one of her major works: Olivier.The star of the evening is the French romanciere Claire de Duras (1777-1828), now emerging as one of the great writers of French Romanticism.The evening will be divided into two parts.

In the first, Marie-Benedicte Diethelm and Pratima Prasad will talk about Duras's career and the process that led to the publication of the definitive versions of Duras's fictions in OEuvres romanesques and Memoires de Sophie, Amelie et Pauline: Romans d'emigration.

This will be illustrated with readings of passages in translation.In the second, Pratima Prasad and Chris Miller (respectively editor and translator of the OUP volume) will address the challenges of presenting and translating Claire de Duras in the twenty-first century.About the SpeakersMarie-Benedicte Diethelm is a chercheuse associee at the CNRS/Sorbonne Universite (CELLF-19-21).

She has rediscovered, edited, introduced, and annotated Duras's work, and is the editor of Humboldt's Lettres a Claire de Duras (2016) and of Astolphe de Custine's Aloys (2024)Pratima Prasad is Professor of French and Dean of the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Massachusetts Boston.

She is a scholar of colonialism and nineteenth-century studies and the author of Colonialism, Race and the French Romantic Imagination (2009).Chris Miller is a freelance translator and literary critic who has published widely on poetry and poetry in translation.

He has translated the Brazilian poets Erico Nogueira and Marco Catalao.This event is supported by the Queen's Translation Exchange.