Depicting imaginary authorship: On authority and unreliability in eighteenth‐century French pseudotranslations

Mimicking translational practice, pseudotranslations—original texts that present themselves as translations—hold the potential of laying bare some literary conventions that shaped the literary context in which they appear. This is also illustrated by the ambivalent nature of pseudotranslations—seen as translation by some, and as original by others—which challenges the idea of authorship in relation to modes of textual transfer. This article proposes to investigate the depiction of authorship in eighteenth‐century French pseudotranslations. The analysis will illustrate how their paratextual staging of both imaginary author and (pseudo‐)translator conveys a (meta)fictional commentary, based on a playful oscillation between construction and dismantlement. This hypothesis will be addressed through close‐readings of Mylord Stanley, ou le criminel vertueux (1747), Histoire de Miss Honora (1766) and Le philosophe anglois , ou histoire de Mr. Cleveland (1731). These novels, all part of the ‘Anglomania’ movement, critically engage with images of authorship and translatorship. A comparative reading of their paratexts will bring out the interplay between the imaginary author as an embodiment of the cultural authority of the source text and the creative impetus drawn from his alleged unreliability as an author (and narrator), as well as that of the translator.