Déjà lu : Recurrence, Allusion, and Plagiarism in Translation

I am grateful to the Swedish Academy, and in particular to Professor Sture Allėn, for accepting this paper for the Nobel Symposium on the Translation of Poetry and Poetic Prose. This text has benefited from the astute comments made on that occasion, particularly by Emmanuela Tandello, who served as discussant, and Seamus Heaney, who served as chair and rapporteur. An earlier version was presented on 20 August 1997 at the XVth Congress of the International Comparative Literature Association in Leiden, and was in press at the time of the symposium. It has now been published in Translation Quarterly Nos. 7 & 8 (1998), pp. 33–67. I am particularly indebted to Professor Liangyan Ge, Katherine Ka-man Ng, and T. L. Stikeleather for their assistance in the preparation of this paper.