Imagologie, imaginaire, traduction: questions de représentation littéraire et culturelle

Abstract: This essay focuses on literary images and, more spe- cifically, on their status as representational categories of cultural and literary issues. The capacity of literary images to be at the heart of the relationship between the historical and cultural moment that gave rise to them and their intrinsic openness to ideology, to forms of exoticism, and to social and cultural is- sues, constitutes the background of this reflection. Moreover, this perspective of analysis makes it possible to reflect on the 84 role of images in the process of creation of the writer’s artistic work, while raising questions related to poetics that indicate a precise path for the interpretation of his imagination. It is at this level that imagology, as an instrument of representation of the Other, establishes a dialogue with the reception of the image of the Other through the translated text. In this respect, some paths will be sketched out that can guide the reflection on this dialectic between literary images and translated text, and thus between imagology and translation. It is on the basis of these analytical and hermeneutical possibilities that imagology is today one of the most fruitful fields in the framework of comparative and literary studies.