Abstract
As one of the founders of modern French criticism, Paul Valéry's poetics not only inspired major intellectual movements within the French academic system but also transformed the landscape of literary studies. Central to his poetics is a sustained engagement with translation—both as a personal practice and as a theoretical pursuit. This engagement positioned translation as an embodiment of his poetics and gave rise to a distinctive poetics of translation. Focusing on Valéry's perspectives on language and literature, this article examines three dimensions of his poetics of translation: 1. treating the original text as a “pretext” and translation as both a poetic practice and a paradigm; 2. elevating translation to the ontological level of literature and expanding its scope literary theory, thereby conceptualizing translation as an “act” and tracing a fragmented, networked poetic trajectory through a “hypertextual” lens; 3. viewing translation as a means of extending a text's life through the idea of “potential texts.” These three dimensions articulate Valéry's distinctive vision of language and literature, and together form the foundation of his unique poetics of translation.
Keywords
Paul Valéry, poetics of translation, pretext, hypertext, potential text
First Page
152
Last Page
160
Recommended Citation
Gan, Lu. 2026. "Pretext, Hypertext, and Potential Text: An Analysis of Paul Valéry's Poetics of Translation." Theoretical Studies in Literature and Art 46, (1): pp.152-160. https://tsla.researchcommons.org/journal/vol46/iss1/15
