Channel Crossings

Scott's subtle and adventurous analysis breaks new ground in textual understanding, while his translations radically challenge established orthodoxies. As he crosses back and forth between French and English poetry, he has illuminating encounters with a wide range of poets, from Labe and Shakespeare to Auden and Jaccottet. The embodiment of gender in the sonnet; the performance of the dramatic voice; the inflexions of the self in the voice of lyric verse; the 'landscaping' of nature in the line of verse; the interventions of the translator in the peculiar lives of the prose poem and free verse; the tasks of the translator and the comparatist in a new age - these are some of the issues addressed by Clive Scott in a sequence of essays as absorbing as they are original. "Channel Crossings" is the recipient of the R. H. Gapper Prize for 2004. The Prize, which is judged by the Society for French Studies, recognises the best publication of its year by any French studies scholar working in the United Kingdom or Ireland. The citation noted: In his book, Clive Scott gives a subtle and adventurous account of how processes of cultural exchange have played an active and enduring role in the development of the language of poetry in French and English over a period of several centuries...Clive Scott's book was one of a number of very impressive works published in 2002. The judges' choice was made in the light of the book's originality and its likely impact on wider critical debate on the language of poetry and on questions of method and approach in comparative literature.