The Intimately Global Journey of Grace Aguilar's The Vale of Cedars

World Literature, Translation, and Diaspora: The Intimately Global Journey of Grace Aguilar’s The Vale of Cedars

Lital Levy (Princeton University) follows the translation history of the Anglo-Jewish author Grace Aguilar’s 1850 novel The Vale of Cedars from Victorian England to Mainz, Warsaw, Vilna, Tunis, and Calcutta. A case study for her project on “Global Haskalah,” it brings together world literature and translation studies, transnational literary history, and Jewish literary studies. While mapping the book’s multilingual journey and elucidating the cultural markers of its myriad translations, the talk will highlight the influential Hebrew edition and its Judeo-Arabic successors.