The relationship between textual and reader variables in literary perception: an empirical approach to the reception of Japanese poetry in translation

The question of what makes a text ‘literary’ has been philosophically evergreen, stretching back to Aristotle’s Poetics and weathering every critical approach through the modern era. Since the 1970s, researchers in the field of Empirical Studies in Literature (ESL) have tried to determine whether literary processing is principally text-directed (the formalist position) or reader-directed (the conventionalist position), based on observations of actual readers. Given the widespread characterisation of reading as intensely subjective, we might expect to see a huge diversity of response—yet major studies in ESL have reported results in favour of the formalist position. In expanding its sample beyond undergraduates, this survey-based study of Japanese poetry in English translation gives diversity of response a greater chance to emerge, and produces evidence suggesting that the case for the formalist position is not as strong as previously thought. Moreover, this thesis engages with recent work in Translation Studies to account for the translated-ness of its stimulus texts. Recognising translation as an important litmus test for understanding ‘literariness,’ this thesis operationalises a major contemporary theory of translation for the first time: Venuti’s ([1995] 2008) theory of foreignisation. Against its proponent’s objections, I make the case for the amenability of this theory to empirical testing, laying the groundwork for further study. Building on Eco (1990), I advance a useful new concept (intentio translatoris) to schematise the dynamics of reader response in Venuti’s theory and explain the shifting criteria by which he describes translations as foreignising. Following an in-depth comparison between Russian Formalism and Venuti’s foreignisation, I conclude that the latter theory does not totally escape the instrumental model it rejects. I do this to challenge unspoken assumptions about the translator as source of invariance, and to encourage a reassessment of the role of intentio lectoris in reading literature in translation.