PARODIED MORALISTIC POEMS IN ALICE’S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND TRANSLATED INTO RUSSIAN IN THE EARLY 20TH CENTURY

Abstract

The paper features the poems recited by Alice in L. Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , with a focus on their translations into Russian done between 1908 and 1913 in Saint Petersburg. A special attention is given to the attempts to keep in the translations the features of grotesque and parody. The paper argues that during the formation of poetic translation in Russia in the early 20^th century Carroll’s poems from the book were rendered with the relevant elements of grotesque or parody, or combining both. The comparison of the translations and identifying relevant features of the poems promoted to the conclusion that adding grotesque features to the parody in the form of a better known poem in the target language got a wider use among translators. However, this approach caused the omission of some relevant elements of the source text. Overall, the poems in the book in the early 20^th century editions played a significant part in shaping more consistent translation solutions to render Carroll’s book into Russian.