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The Culture of Translation in Early Modern England and France, 1500–1660 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40148–9 Selection, introduction and editorial matter © Tania Demetriou and Rowan Tomlinson 2015 Individual chapters © Contributors 2015 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6–10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2015 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978–1–137–40148–9 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Culture of Translation in Early Modern England and France, 1500–1660 / edited by Tania Demetriou, Lecturer, University of York, UK; Rowan Tomlinson, Lecturer, University of Bristol, UK. pages cm. —(Early modern literature in history) Summary: ‘This collection explores the varied modalities and cultural interventions of translation in early modern England and France. Paying attention to the shared parameters of these two translation cultures, it argues for their interaction as an important and untold story. The essays touch on key figures in this story – Mary Sidney, Montaigne and Florio, Urquhart and Rabelais – but also probe the role of translation in the large cultural shifts experienced in parallel by the two countries. Topics explored include: the galvanizing impact of Greek and Hebrew on the two translation cultures; translation’s guises in the humanist practice of France and England; translation as definition of national difference; as a broker of state diplomacy; as a tool for sceptical philosophy; and as a means of imagining a linguistic utopia. The essays’ scope ranges from methodological reflections toward a cultural history of early modern translation, to the adventures of a sceptical adverb between France and England’ — Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–1–137–40148–9 (hardback) 1. Translating and interpreting—Great Britain—History—16th century. 2. Translating and interpreting—Great Britain—History—17th century. 3. Translating and interpreting—France—History—16th century. 4. Translating and interpreting—France— History—17th century. 5. English literature—Early modern, 1500–1700—History and criticism. 6. French literature—16th century—History and criticism. 7. French literature— 17th century—History and criticism. 8. Translations—Publishing—Great Britain— History. 9. Translations—Publishing—France—History. I. Demetriou, Tania, 1979– editor. II. Tomlinson, Rowan Cerys, 1978– editor. P306.8.G7C85 2014 418'.020941—dc23 2014025881 Typeset by MPS Limited, Chennai, India. Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40148–9 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40148–9 Contents List of Illustrations vii Acknowledgements viii Notes on the Contributors ix Introduction ‘Abroad in Mens Hands’: The Culture of Translation in Early Modern England and France 1 Tania Demetriou and Rowan Tomlinson 1 From Cultural Translation to Cultures of Translation? Early Modern Readers, Sellers and Patrons 22 Warren Boutcher 2 Francis I’s Royal Readers: Translation and the Triangulation of Power in Early Renaissance France (1533–4) 41 Glyn P. Norton 3 Pure and Common Greek in Early Tudor England 54 Neil Rhodes 4 From Commentary to Translation: Figurative Representations of the Text in the French Renaissance 71 Paul White 5 Periphrōn Penelope and her Early Modern Translations 86 Tania Demetriou 6 Richard Stanihurst’s Aeneis and the English of Ireland 112 Patricia Palmer 7 Women’s Weapons: Country House Diplomacy in the Countess of Pembroke’s French Translations 128 Edward Wilson-Lee 8 ‘Peradventure’ in Florio’s Montaigne 145 Kirsti Sellevold v Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40148–9 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40148–9 vi Contents 9 Translating Scepticism and Transferring Knowledge in Montaigne’s House 162 John O’Brien 10 Urquhart’s Inflationary Universe 175 Anne Lake Prescott Epilogue 191 Terence Cave Bibliography 201 Index 219 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40148–9 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40148–9 Introduction ‘Abroad in Mens Hands’: The Culture of Translation in Early Modern England an d France Tania Demetriou and Rowan Tomlinson Neuertheless if it so fortune that men find not the speech of this translation so flowing, as they haue found some other of mine, that are abroad in mens hands: I beseech the readers to consider, that the office of a fit translater, consisteth not onely in the faithfull expressing of his authors meaning, but also in a certain resembling and shadowing out of the forme of his style and the maner of his speaking: vnlesse he will commit the errour of some painters, who hauing taken vpon them to draw a man liuely, do paint him long where he should be short, and grosse where he should be slender, and yet set out the resemblance of his countenance naturally. For how harsh or rude soeuer my speech be, yet am I sure that my translation will be much easier to my contriemen, than the Greeke copie is, euen to such as are best practised in the Greeke tonge, by reason of Plutarkes peculiar maner of inditing, which is rather sharpe, learned and short, than plaine, pol- ished and easie.1 These are the words of Thomas North in his 1579 Lives of the Noble Grecians and Romans, a translation that successfully found its way ‘abroad’ to the hands of many of his ‘countrymen’. One of them gave the book an afterlife of which North could hardly have dreamt. The translator’s words may have made Shakespeare wonder what 1 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40148–9 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40148–9 2 Tania Demetriou and Rowan Tomlinson ‘Plutarkes peculiar maner of inditing’ was really like, or reflect on the English prose he was reading and whether it did succeed in ‘resembling and shadowing out of the forme of his style and the maner of his speaking’. They may even have made Shakespeare, avid reader of translations that he was, pause to ponder ‘the office of a fit translater’. This is the more likely because of the notorious paucity of translation theory in this corner of Europe that the humanist enter- prise reached late, and which so greatly depended on translation. Yet Englishmen reading these words were not being led to such reflections by North, but by the French translator of Plutarch that North was translating: this is Jacques Amyot’s ‘Epistle to the Reader’, Englished by North along with the Lives. North makes this clear in the title: ‘Amiot to the Readers’. Many readers would also have been aware that it was not North but Amyot who could accurately speak of a series of previous translations by him as being ‘abroad in mens hands’. By 1579, Amyot, ‘the most admired translator of his time’, had established himself specifically as the bringer of Greek culture to vernacular readers.2 With the Vies (1559) and the Oeuvres morales (1574), Amyot made the entirety of Plutarch’s vast corpus available to a vernacular readership. His Plutarch versions had been preceded by notably ambitious translations of Heliodorus’ Aethiopica (1548), and of Books 11–17 of Diodorus Siculus’ Library (1554). The Vies was the first complete translation of the work to be published, as his Heliodorus had been; and in the same year, Amyot brought out Longus’ Daphnis and Chloe, publishing the novel in French before its editio princeps.3 The French translator could look back to these other works, and find his idiom in the Vies less ‘flowing’, or ‘coulant’.4 He could speak as someone who had engaged with Greek prose extensively enough to judge that Plutarch’s style was different from that of Heliodorus, or Longus, or Diodorus, ‘plus aiguë, plus docte & pressee’, and not ‘clere, polie ou aisee’. North, who could do none of these things, does not hide this, but defers to Amyot’s authority by carefully translating his epistle. He offers his own, separate, far more modest translation statement: ‘My onely purpose is to desire you to excuse the faults of my translation with your owne gentlenes, and with the opinion of my diligence and good intent.’ But he also trans- lates Amyot’s translation theory because he recognizes that it has something to offer to the reader. He does not translate Amyot’s letter mechanically: where Amyot speaks of his audience as the ‘François’, Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40148–9 Copyrighted material – 978–1–137–40148–9 Introduction 3 North turns it into ‘my contriemen’, thus bringing the epistle a step closer to the new audience, but without appropriating Amyot’s voice or opinions. He engages with Amyot’s translation theory, finding English terms for it – ‘la sentence de son autheur’ becomes his ‘mean- ing’, ‘representer aucunement & … adumbrer’ becomes ‘a certain resembling and shadowing out’ – and giving it a new circulation.
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