Preface: Objects of Translation(s)

In diverse ways, the scholars collected in this volume make compelling cases for expanding the repertoire of texts worthy of study in English classrooms to include translations. In this preface, I briefly introduce each of these six interventions, while examining how and why translation changes—or might prompt us to change—the way we approach the teaching of texts of British Romanticism in particular, and literature in general, within a planetary context. The scholars collected here reflect this global framework, not simply in that they work and teach in five different countries spanning four continents, but also in that they address planetary textual objects, objects that force us to confront the fact that these texts are "built to travel, to meet new interlocutors, and to develop over time." [1] Translations, I will argue, call on us to think anew the way we face the planet and its literary history.