Zdeněk Urbánek and his controversial translation of Hamlet

Bc. Kateřina Kotačková

Master's thesis

Abstract:

The thesis Zdeněk Urbánek and his controversial translation of Hamlet disserts on the personality of Urbánek, his life and work, especially translation of the work by William Shakespeare. The main part of my work stems from the opening of the play Hamlet, translated by Urbánek, at the National theatre in Prague in 1959. This performance, particularly the translation, earned great criticism among the theoreticians and reviewers for its new approach to translation of Shakespeare, and especially for the innovative interpretation of the individual characters. The translation aroused an almost immediate discussion between the theoreticians Alois Bejblík and Milan Lukeš, and Zdeněk Urbánek in the Divadlo magazine. My analysis of the interpretation of the characters of Hamlet and Fortinbras tries to show that the understanding of the characters is subjective and that translation always creates more or less an adaption of the original work, which is always subjective to the views and understanding of the author of the translation.

Abstract:

The thesis Zdeněk Urbánek and his controversial translation of Hamlet disserts on the personality of Urbánek, his life and work, especially translation of the work by William Shakespeare. The main part of my work stems from the opening of the play Hamlet, translated by Urbánek, at the National theatre in Prague in 1959. This performance, particularly the translation, earned great criticism among the theoreticians and reviewers for its new approach to translation of Shakespeare, and especially for the innovative interpretation of the individual characters. The translation aroused an almost immediate discussion between the theoreticians Alois Bejblík and Milan Lukeš, and Zdeněk Urbánek in the Divadlo magazine. My analysis of the interpretation of the characters of Hamlet and Fortinbras tries to show that the understanding of the characters is subjective and that translation always creates more or less an adaption of the original work, which is always subjective to the views and understanding of the author of the translation.

Keywords

Zdeněk Urbánek, Shakespeare, translation of Hamlet, premiere of Hamlet in 1959, translation analysis, interpretation of characters, Hamlet, Fortinbras, discussion between theoreticians Bejblík, Lukeš and Urbánek

Language used: English

Date on which the thesis was submitted / produced: 5. 5. 2009

Thesis defence

• Date of defence: 15. 6. 2009
• Supervisor: doc. Mgr. Pavel Drábek, Ph.D.

Masaryk University

Faculty of Arts

Master programme / field:
Teacher Training for Secondary Schools / Upper Secondary School Teacher Training in English Language and Literature