Clive Scott (linguist)

Clive Scott is a British scholar of modern languages and translation studies. ^[1] He is Emeritus Professor of European Literature at the University of East Anglia (UEA) and ^[2] a Fellow of the British Academy. ^[3] His work spans French poetry, comparative poetics, photography and its relationship with writing, and the philosophy and practice of literary translation. ^[4]

Early life and education

Scott was educated at Bishop’s Stortford College (1956–1961) and later attended St John’s College, Oxford, where he earned degrees in French and German (MA, 1965), General and Comparative Literature (MPhil, 1967), and a DPhil in 1975. His doctoral thesis focused on comparative versification, specifically the role of line-endings in fixed forms and free verse. ^[3]

Academic career

Scott joined the University of East Anglia in 1967 as an Assistant Lecturer and became a founding member of the French sector in the School of European Studies. He was appointed Lecturer in 1970, promoted to Reader in 1988, and became Professor of European Literature in 1991. He was made Emeritus Professor in 2008. ^[5]

He also chaired course-validating committees for several external institutions and served as Acting Director of the British Centre for Literary Translation (2003–2004). ^[6] From 2004 to 2005, he was Head of the School of Literature and Creative Writing. ^[7]

He has held editorial or advisory positions with a number of publications and organizations, including Parnasse, New Comparison, the British Centre for Literary Translation, Second Sight, the Half-Tone Press, Open Book Publishers, Thinking Verse, and the Transcript series published by Legenda. ^[3]

Scott was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1994 and became Emeritus in 2023. ^[5] In 2008, he was named Ordre des Palmes Académiques by the French government. ^[8] He served as President of the Modern Humanities Research Association from 2014 to 2015. ^[9]

Scholarly work and research

Scott’s early scholarship focused on comparative poetics and versification, particularly in relation to French poetry. ^[4]

His DPhil thesis explored line-endings in fixed forms and free verse across languages, contributing to cross-cultural understandings of poetic structure and rhythm. He later examined the formal and expressive qualities of French verse in works such as Vers libre: The Emergence of Free Verse in France, 1886–1914 (1990). ^[10]

In the late 1990s, Scott turned to the relationship between photography and writing, analyzing their different expressive modes and mutual interferences. ^[5] His monographs The Spoken Image: Photography and Language (1999) ^[11] and Street Photography: From Atget to Cartier-Bresson (2007) reflect an interdisciplinary approach, drawing on literary theory, visual studies, and cultural history. ^[12]

His book Channel Crossings: French and English Poetry in Dialogue 1550–2000 (2002) traces reciprocal influences between poetic traditions and was awarded the R.H. Gapper Book Prize in 2003. ^[13] Literary Translation and the Rediscovery of Reading (2012), based on his 2010 Clark Lectures at the University of Cambridge, emphasizes the act of translation as a mode of critical and creative reading. ^[14] Translating the Perception of Text (2012), which received a Gapper commendation, explores the perceptual and cognitive dimensions of translation. ^[15] Scott’s more recent theoretical work incorporates ecological and phenomenological frameworks, influenced by thinkers such as Henri Bergson, Jakob von Uexküll, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. ^[16]

Selected publications

Books authored

• Scott, Clive (1980). French Verse-Art:A Study. Cambridge University Press. p. 252. ISBN   9780521226899.
• Scott, Clive (11 September 1986). A Question of Syllables. Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-0-521-32584-4.
• Scott, Clive (1988). The riches of rhyme: studies in French verse. Oxford: Clarendon Pr. ISBN   978-0-19-815853-0.
• Scott, Clive (5 April 1990). Vers Libre. Oxford University PressOxford. ISBN   0-19-815159-4.
• Scott, Clive (5 August 1993). Reading the Rhythm. Oxford University PressOxford. ISBN   0-19-815882-3.
• Scott, Clive (1998). The poetics of French verse: studies in reading. Oxford: Clarendon. ISBN   978-0-19-815944-5.
• Scott, Clive (1999). The spoken image: photography and language. London: Reaktion. ISBN   978-1-86189-032-0.
• Scott, Clive (2000). Translating Baudelaire. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. ISBN   978-0-85989-658-0.
• Scott, Clive (2002). Channel crossings: French and English poetry in dialogue, 1550-2000. Oxford: European Humanities Research Centre. ISBN   978-1-900755-54-2.
• Scott, Clive (2006). Translating Rimbaud's Illuminations. Exeter, U.K: University of Exeter Press. ISBN   978-0-85989-769-3.
• Scott, Clive (2007). Street Photography: From Atget to Cartier-Bresson. I.B.Tauris. ISBN   978-1-84511-223-3.
• Scott, Clive (2012). Literary translation and the rediscovery of reading. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-1-107-02230-0.
• Scott, Clive (2012). Translating the perception of text: literary translation and phenomenology. London: Legenda, Modern Humanities Research Association and Maney Publishing. ISBN   978-1-315-08461-9.
• Scott, Clive (2014). Translating Apollinaire. Exeter: University of Exeter Press. ISBN   978-0-85989-895-9.
• Scott, Clive (2018). The work of literary translation. Cambridge New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-1-108-44581-8.
• Scott, Clive (2023). The Philosophy of Literary Translation: Dialogue, Movement, Ecology (1st ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   978-1-009-38995-2.
• Scott, Clive (15 May 2025). The Tremors of Translation: An Edition of Voltaire's Poème sur le désastre de Lisbonne (1756). Modern Humanities Research Association. ISBN   978-1-83954-391-3.

Edited volumes

• Scott, Clive, ed. (1983). Anthologie Eluard. Methuen's twentieth century French texts. London: Methuen Educational. ISBN   978-0-423-50880-2.      
• Scott, Clive; Warr, Nick, eds. (29 September 2023). Shadows of Reality: A Catalogue of WG Sebald’s Photographic Materials. Boiler House Press.
• Scott, Clive; Moore, Andrew, eds. (1 August 2025). Translating John Crome : Through Sight to Insight. UEA Publishing Project. p. 256. ISBN   9781915812728.

References

1. "Announcement of Gapper Book Prize winner at the Society for French Studies. Accessed 20 May 2008". Archived from the original on 7 July 2007. Retrieved 20 May 2008.
2. "Accessed 20 May 2008". Archived from the original on 7 July 2007. Retrieved 20 May 2008.
3. "Professor Clive Scott FBA". The British Academy.
4. Egid, Jonathan. "Questioning language Exploring the phenomenology of literary translation". TLS.
5. Hue, Xie; Scott, Clive (2019). "Reading is Translation: An Interview with Professor Clive Scott". Foreign language and Literature Research 2: 10–17. doi:10.16651/j.cnki.fllr.2019.0018.
6. Fotiade, Ramona (2014). "Translating the Perception of the Text: Literary Translation and Phenomenology by Clive Scott (review)". French Studies: A Quarterly Review. 68 (1): 143–144. ISSN   1468-2931.
7. Pajević, Marko (19 January 2021). "Literary Translation and Transmediality: Clive Scott's Reader-Oriented Translation Theory and Practice". Journal of Critical Studies in Language and Literature. 2 (2): 1–10. doi:10.46809/jcsll.v2i2.53. ISSN   2732-4605.
8. http://thinkingverse.org/issue04b/Cook_CliveScott.pdf Clive Scott: An Appreciation JON COOK
9. "Clive Scott – transARTation" . Retrieved 18 August 2025.
10. Bobillot, Jean-Pierre (1992). "Review of Vers Libre. The Emergence of Free Verse in France 1886-1914". Revue d'Histoire littéraire de la France. 92 (5): 923–926. ISSN   0035-2411.
11. "Clive Scott". University of Chicago Press. Retrieved 18 August 2025.
12. all-about-photo.com (13 August 2025). Street Photography: From Atget to Cartier-Bresson.
13. "R. Gapper Book Prize". The Society for French Studies. Retrieved 18 August 2025.
14. Infante, Ignacio (November 2014). "Clive Scott Literary Translation and the Rediscovery of ReadingLiterary Translation and the Rediscovery of Reading. Clive Scott. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Pp. xi+226". Modern Philology. 112 (2): E152 –E155. doi:10.1086/676986. ISSN   0026-8232.
15. "Scott, Clive. Translating the Perception of Text: Literary Translation and Phenomenology. Oxford: Legenda, 2012. 207 pp. 45.00 ($89.50). ISBN 978-1-907975-35-6". Forum for Modern Language Studies. 50 (1): 130–131. 1 January 2014. doi:10.1093/fmls/cqt059. ISSN   0015-8518.
16. Scott, Clive, ed. (2023), "Introduction", The Philosophy of Literary Translation: Dialogue, Movement, Ecology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–12, ISBN   978-1-009-38995-2 , retrieved 18 August 2025