Various problems which occur during the translation of a literary text are often linked to the linguistic and extra-linguistic particularities of the original text. This thesis, which focuses on A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving and its French translation, Une priere pour Owen by Michel Lebrun, deals with several of these problems. The analysis is based on two axes of reflection. The first, theoretical, is discussed in chapter one and bears on three fundamental elements of the act of translation: the notion of the ethics of translation (which concerns, among other things, the question of accuracy, or "faithfulness"); the actual process of translation, that is the operation during which certain characteristics of the source text are necessarily modified; and, finally, the polysystem theory. This approach allows the consideration of "external" elements, for example, the target culture and reader. / The second axis of reflection is in fact inspired in large part by the polysystem theory because of this consideration. As both the original and its translation refer to a specific linguistic context, literary intertext and socio-cultural milieu, chapter two deals with John Irving's and Michel Lebrun's bio-bibliography as well as certain characteristics of the American and French polysystems and of the best-seller markets in the two countries. We felt it would be useful to study these factors in order to better evaluate the translated text and to better understand the translator's choices. / In the third and final chapter the translation itself was analysed. The study of the solutions chosen by Michel Lebrun to solve the problems posed by the source text leads us to believe that the translator produced a text responding to the expectations of the average reader, fond of best-sellers.

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The phrase “glimpsing the balance between earth and sky” in the thesis title is taken from Jeanette Winterson’s Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. In this novel, the central character Jeanette believes she has glimpsed the possibility that human relationships can find their mirror in the relationship with God, as she understands the divine Other. This glimpse has set her wandering, trying to find such a balance. This examination of four selected novels by Jeanette Winterson and John Irving shows that for Irving, “glimpsing the balance” means in part, giving voice to a strongly “Christian” view of humankind and human nature but in an age where the prevailing intellectual worldview is strongly sceptical of any Grand Narrative. The “voice” expressed in Irving’s work has to be situated, like Winterson’s, as one among many possibilities. Irving’s voice is itself masked as different, other/Other, freakish, in the narrative worlds he creates. Through his use of grotesque comedy as a vehicle for deeper philosophical concerns, Irving asks us: What after all in the postmodern world is the main show? This thesis argues that if Winterson and Irving are testing or re-presenting a Christian worldview in a postmodern context, than they are asking whether Christianity is capable of assimilating and rising above the worst circumstances the world, writer, and life can throw at it. In Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Winterson tells a story of “forbidden love”, posed as a direct challenge to the prevailing way of knowing in her character’s community. In Gut Symmetries, she expands this challenge by employing the insights of quantum physics to make sense of the complexities raised by a triangular love relationship. Irving offers the story of Owen in A Prayer for Owen Meany as the kind of story which might possibly make a believer out of him; in short, that he would have to be a witness to some kind of miracle, something utterly inexplicable. In A Son of the Circus Irving narrates the quest for identity undertaken by an Indian doctor who is in every way a Displaced Person – the condition, he implies, of anyone who purports to find their piece of the truth. The theoretical concerns of the postmodern project are examined through Lawrence Cahoone’s argument that postmodern writing offers criticism of: presence, origin, unity and transcendence through an analytical strategy of constitutive otherness. In each of their texts, Irving and Winterson are seen to use these four critical elements and to offer a postmodern strategy of re-presenting meaning through “constitutive otherness”. Both writers also employ a strategy of historiographic metafiction (as defined by Linda Hutcheon) as a means of constructing and re-presenting their narrated stories. Postmodern paradox is compatible with what could be called a Christian plan for living, if the latter is in turn given an appropriate 1990s interpretation. The selected novels by Winterson and Irving are offered as contemporary evidence for this view. This thesis argues that the connection between postmodernism and other worldviews, particularly Christianity, is found in both projects’ process of making meanings through encounters with an other/Other.