Home > JFS > Iss. 23 (2023)

From “A Room of Your Own” to “A Room of Her Own”: Women ReWriting Women and The Path to Feminist Practice

Vasiliki Misiou, Aristotle University of ThessalonikiFollow

Abstract

Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own (1929) was first translated in Greek by Mina Dalamanga (Odysseus Editions) in 1980. Almost forty years later, in 2019, Vasia Tzanakari was assigned the translation of Woolf’s seminal text by Metaichmio Publications. And in 2021, a new translation by Sparti Gerodimou saw the light of day, published by Erato Publications (2021). Three different women translators have thus rendered Woolf’s text in Greek with all three publications coming out at times marked by significant changes in Greek society. Exploring the context in which the agents were situated and drawing on feminist translation practices and approaches to translation, while informed by critical linguistics and sociolinguistics, this paper investigates the translational travel of Woolf’s text and the way(s) it intervened in representation(s) of feminism, gender, sexuality, and identity in the Greek context. Based on the agenda pursued by the agents themselves, as reflected in the paratextual materials studied here, this paper ultimately discusses the interaction and interweaving among gender, language, and translation, as well as the umbilical ties between feminism(s) and translation that are testimony to the acts of transformation performed in society.

Recommended Citation

Misiou, Vasiliki. 2023. "From “A Room of Your Own” to “A Room of Her Own”: Women ReWriting Women and The Path to Feminist Practice." Journal of Feminist Scholarship 23 (Fall): 5-23. 10.23860/jfs.2023.23.02.