Research – letitia henville

Journal Article: “Ballad Haunting: Stevenson’s ‘The Song of Rahéro’.”

In this paper, I look closely at one of Robert Louis Stevenson’s first pieces of writing from his Polynesian years, “The Song of Rahéro: A Legend of Tahiti” (1890), which was a translation of an Indigenous Tahitian legend. I argue that his adaptation into the ballad form brings into the poem a fatalistic, haunting undertone that runs counter to the bardic poetry of the peripheries of empire that had been produced by Scottish writers a hundred years before Stevenson.

Curriculum Development, ePortfolio Initiative, UBC Arts

Working in Curriculum Development for the UBC Faculty of Arts ePortfolio Initiative, I help faculty members to integrate online portfolios into courses and programs, and coach students as they collect and curate their work for the web.

Journal Article: “‘The Walter Scott of Tahiti’: Robert Louis Stevenson’s Ballad Translation”

This paper examines the unrestrained license that Robert Louis Stevenson used while composing his ballad, “Song of Rahéro: A Legend of Tahiti,” which is a translation of a traditional Tahitian legend. Stevenson attempted to replicate Tahitian rhythms in his translation, thus bringing foreign forms and, in transliteration, foreign words, to a traditionally British genre.

Journal Article: “Andrew Lang’s “Literary Plagiarism”: Reading Material and the Material of Literature”

This paper examines the metaphors used in Andrew Lang’s 1887 Longman’s Magazine article “Literary Plagiarism,” arguing that Lang repeatedly describes ideas as if they are objects in order to frame the late-nineteenth-century plagiarism debate as a discussion of the best use of materials.

Late Victorian Ballad Translation

My PhD research focused on a traditionally British verse form, the ballad. In the last decade of the nineteenth century, at a time of a rampant uptake in colonialism--and, this being a generation after Darwin's Origin, at a time when there was no pretense of missionary zeal to justify colonial violence--the traditionally British verse form of the ballad was increasingly peopled with non-British cultures, voices, stories, and words.

Victorian Poetry (Winter 2016): Special Issue, “Ballads”

I developed and edited Volume 54, Number 4, of the journal Victorian Poetry. This special issue investigates one of the most collected and categorized poetic genres of the Victorian period: the ballad.

Skill: Research