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Translation, Reputation, and Authorship in Eighteenth-Century Britain

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Translation, Reputation, and Authorship in Eighteenth-Century Britain Translation, Reputation, and Authorship in Eighteenth-Century Britain by Catherine Fleming A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Catherine Fleming 2018 Translation, Reputation, and Authorship in Eighteenth-Century Britain Catherine Fleming Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto 2018 Abstract This thesis explores the reputation-building strategies which shaped eighteenth-century translation practices by examining authors of both translations and original works whose lives and writing span the long eighteenth century. Recent studies in translation have often focused on the way in which adaptation shapes the reception of a foreign work, questioning the assumptions and cultural influences which become visible in the process of transformation. My research adds a new dimension to the emerging scholarship on translation by examining how foreign texts empower their English translators, offering opportunities for authors to establish themselves within a literary community. Translation, adaptation, and revision allow writers to set up advantageous comparisons to other authors, times, and literary milieux and to create a product which benefits from the cachet of foreignness and the authority implied by a pre-existing audience, successful reception history, and the standing of the original author. I argue that John Dryden, Alexander Pope, Eliza Haywood, and Elizabeth Carter integrate this legitimizing process into their conscious attempts at self-fashioning as they work with existing texts to demonstrate creative and compositional skills, establish kinship to canonical authors, and both ii construct and insert themselves within a literary canon, exercising a unique form of control over their contemporary reputation. By examining the classical translations of Dryden and Pope alongside Haywood’s popular French translations and Carter’s scholarly and philosophical translations from Greek, Italian, and French, I show how each of these authors use conventions of classical translation, following similar strategies to build reputations. Both Pope and Dryden ask readers to compare them to a classical source, but Dryden promotes his writing by praising the authors he translates while Pope’s relationship to his originals is often adversarial. Haywood refuses to follow the topos of modesty, demanding equality with her authors, while Carter caters to current fashions by displaying her faults while praising her original. Although they wrote for different audiences and in different genres, I argue that these writers and their contemporaries saw translation as a central part of their public identity and I call for increased scholarly attention to this dimension of self-fashioning in eighteenth-century literature. iii Acknowledgments This study could never have been completed without the generous advice and support I have received. My work is immeasurably better for the input of my supervisor, Thomas Keymer, my committee members Carol Percy and Simon Stern, and my friend Abigail Lochtefeld, who has read this almost as often as I have. My time as a fellow at Chawton House Library was also invaluable. I have been truly blessed by the time, patience, and support of my colleagues, family, and friends. iv Table of Contents Acknowledgments.......................................................................................................................... iv Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................ v Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Adaptive Translation ................................................................................................................... 4 Narrowing Definitions ................................................................................................................ 9 Authorial Property .................................................................................................................... 24 The History of Translation ........................................................................................................ 28 Translation and the Spread of Ideas .......................................................................................... 32 Translation and Reputation ....................................................................................................... 36 Chapter 1 Dryden: Laureate, Theorist, and Translator ................................................................. 44 A Classical History: Translation and the Classics .................................................................... 47 The Empowered Translator: Dryden’s Translation Theory ...................................................... 62 Creating the Ideal Reader .......................................................................................................... 78 A Poetic Father ......................................................................................................................... 87 Chapter 2 Pope, His Homer, and Himself..................................................................................... 96 Judgement and Invention, Derivation and Debts ...................................................................... 98 The Value of an Original ........................................................................................................ 108 Manliness and Morality .......................................................................................................... 115 Horace ..................................................................................................................................... 130 Pope’s Audience ..................................................................................................................... 140 After Life of Pope’s Translations ........................................................................................... 149 Chapter 3 Haywood: Consistency of Purpose ............................................................................ 152 Who Wrote That? Reputation and Anonymity ....................................................................... 158 Establishing a Reputation ....................................................................................................... 174 Translation as Intervention ..................................................................................................... 188 Establishing a Career: Haywood’s Respectability .................................................................. 197 Chapter 4 Elizabeth Carter: Hidden Fame, Subtle Teaching ...................................................... 213 Contesting Beliefs ................................................................................................................... 221 Social Acceptance ................................................................................................................... 238 Divinely Reasoned Education ................................................................................................. 251 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 272 Works Cited and Consulted ........................................................................................................ 287 v 1 Introduction If you asked an eighteenth-century Londoner what a translator looked like, you would be offered a variety of different images: the schoolboy laboriously parsing his first paragraph out of Caesar, the starving hack writing to order in his publisher’s garret, and the gentleman of leisure or of letters whiling away an hour by inventing a new phrase to express the meaning of a favorite author. Central to each of these images is the question of agency and the challenge of demonstrating creative freedom in a restrictive medium. Despite the challenges of working with another author’s text, translations make up an astonishing 15-35 percent of eighteenth-century prose fiction, as recent scholarly estimates by James Raven, Mary Helen McMurran, and others show.1 When Biblical, philosophical, and poetic translations are factored in, the number of translations rises even further, yet their writers are often discussed as subordinate to their publishers or to their source rather than as authors making their own interpretative decisions. The fear of being merely derivative frightened some writers away from translation, but others sought the respect given to authors who displayed the depth of scholarship and the nuance of interpretation which good translation required. These authors saw translation as a necessary part of their self-creation, offering unique opportunities to establish themselves in a multinational and multigenerational community of writers. 1 James Raven, introduction to The English Novel 1770-1829: A Bibliographical Survey of Prose Fiction Published in the British Isles, ed. James Raven and Antonia Forster (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), I.58; Mary Helen McMurran, The Spread of Novels: Translation and Prose Fiction in the Eighteenth Century (Princeton: Princeton University Press. 2010), 46, 55. 2 Translation allowed authors to connect themselves to other authors, places, and classes while setting up advantageous
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