One of the few translations made by Michel Foucault, and perhaps the most unusual, was an essay by literary theorist Leo Spitzer.
It was published as “Arts du langage et linguistique”, in Leo Spitzer,Etudes de style, Paris: Gallimard, 1970, pp. 45-78. (There are several other pieces in there, translated by others. The text has since been reissued in the Tel series.) Daniel Defert’s ‘Chronology’ dates the publication to 21 January 1970.
The original text was “Linguistics and Literary History”, in Leo Spitzer, Linguistics and Literary History: Essays in Stylistics, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1948, pp. 1-39.
The original was written in English, even though Spitzer had written most of his earlier work in German. All of the other translations by Foucault were from German to French, so this is unusual in being from English to French.
The other issue which I think is interesting is the date of the translation. The 1970…
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