Cosette: A Portuguese Adaptation of Les Misérables for Girls

During the Estado Novo (1933 - 1974), several Portuguese editors published series of mainly translated literature for children and young people, often designed for a specific readership in terms of age and gender. Since books for children and young people can be defined as texts “identified by various social authorities as suitable for children and young people” (O’Sullivan, 2005: 12) one can assume that they often have the purpose of socializing a specific target audience. Thus, their relationship with ideology and gender construction seems especially interesting. The present paper aims to analyse a Portuguese translation and adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérable entitled Cosette, published as part of a series entitled Biblioteca das Raparigas [Girl’s Library]. Parting from approaches to narrative communication in translation studies (Hermans, 1996; Schiavi, 1996) and compared children’s literature (O’Sullivan, 2005) on the one hand, and gender-oriented approaches to narrative theory (Lanser, 1986; Warhol, 1999; Nünning & Nünning, 2004) on the other, I am going to show how gender is represented and constructed in the translation of Hugo’s Les Misérable in order to discuss the potential of translations for the study of literature for children and young people.