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21/11/2023. Foreign/Own: works by the “last optimist of the 20th century”
November 21, 2023:
At the National Library of Karelia, the focus of attention and translation of the participants in the Foreign/Own project was on the works of playwright, novelist, and essayist John Boynton Priestley.
The meeting participants learned that the name of this British writer of the 20th century is not often mentioned among the main classics of English literature and there are many conflicting opinions in assessing his work. However, at one time, the works by John Boynton Priestley led in sales among British readers. During his long writing career, Priestley experienced two waves of popularity. Even during the author’s lifetime, his works were widely translated, published and staged in the USSR. A contemporary of the century, a witness and participant in its many battles, Priestley remained an optimist on the pages of his books, leaving characters a second chance, and he was often reproached for his optimism by both other writers and critics.
Priestley's stories The Leadington Incident and Uncle Phil on TV were offered for reading and discussion. Fragments of the last-mentioned book were translated into Karelian by the group members with the support of Tatyana Baranova, teacher and native speaker of the Livvik dialect of the Karelian language. Particular attention was paid to the translation of phraseological units. Besides, in Priestley’s stories written in 1953, the participants found images and questions that are relevant to our time.
The National Library of Karelia presents the works by John Boynton Priestley both in the original English and in translations into Russian.