Dr Patricia Novillo-Corvalán, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Comparative Literature, will be delivering a talk entitled ‘Beckett, Octavio Paz, and UNESCO: The Cultural Politics of An Anthology of Mexican Poetry (1958)’ as part of a conference entitled Literary Networks and Cultural Collaborations at Birkbeck College, University of London on Saturday 29 October 2016.
Samuel Beckett has long been associated with translation, whether through his translation of James Joyce’s work or his own. Equally significant, albeit less celebrated, is An Anthology of Mexican Poetry (1958), a translation of one hundred poems edited by Octavio Paz, which has so far occupied a marginal place within the Beckett canon. The anthology was part of an international cultural project sponsored by UNESCO and edited by the Mexican writer and diplomat, Octavio Paz.
Patricia’s paper will examine the crucial role played by UNESCO as patron of the anthology, in particular exploring the complicated relationship between the institutional and intellectual bodies responsible for the production and commodification of the anthology (chiefly UNESCO, its official members, and the literary publishing field), and the Mexican and Irish writers commissioned to edit, introduce, and translate the anthology.
For more details about the conference, and the full programme, please see the dedicated site here: https://literarynetworks.wordpress.com