Pagans and Puritans: Protestant Classical Translation
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Willard Marriott Digital Library PAGANS AND PURITANS: PROTESTANT CLASSICAL TRANSLATION IN RENAISSANCE ENGLAND by Andrew Robert Wells A dissertation submitted to the faculty of The University of Utah in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English The University of Utah August 2017 Copyright © Andrew Robert Wells 2017 All Rights Reserved The University of Utah Graduate School STATEMENT OF DISSERTATION APPROVAL The dissertation of Andrew Robert Wells has been approved by the following supervisory committee members: Barry Weller , Chair 05/02/2017 Date Approved Richard Preiss , Member 05/02/2017 Date Approved Thomas Stillinger , Member 05/02/2017 Date Approved Dennis Kezar , Member 05/02/2017 Date Approved Michelle Wolfe , Member 05/05/2017 Date Approved and by Barry Weller , Chair/Dean of the Department/College/School of English and by David B. Kieda, Dean of The Graduate School. ABSTRACT Classical translations by devout English Protestants represent a valuable nexus for interpreting the effects of humanism and the Reformation in England. The Protestant reformers forced Europeans to reimagine their connection to the pagan past. Protestant translators with humanist training felt pressure to make their classical texts and authors useful for their readers’ religious and moral lives, writing paratextual materials and departing from a literal rendering of the source text in order to create an imagined relationship with the past. In my introduction I contrast Tertullian’s rejection of and Augustine’s accommodation of pagan material as echoed by humanists and reformers with renewed urgency throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Chapter 1 places Golding’s 1567 text in its religious context, arguing that Golding risked censure from his fellow Puritans by bringing Ovid’s epic into English. Golding avoided criticism by offering an allegorical reading of the poem through his prefatory materials, but was careful to show that Ovid had meant his poem to be read allegorically. In Chapter 2 I examine the competing secular, religious, medieval, and early modern theories of translation that factor into Drant’s 1566 book, A medicinable moral, which juxtaposes his verse translations of Horace's Satires and the book of Lamentations. I argue that Drant’s text mixes medieval and early modern rhetorics and practices of translation in his version of the Satires, but uses a different set of strategies when rendering the Bible. Chapter 3 explores Hutchinson’s adversarial relationship with her source text and its author. I argue that Hutchinson’s preface to and translation of De rerum natura paint Lucretius as an enemy against whom she defines herself and proves her valor as a Christian author. However, Hutchinson approvingly echoes Lucretius’ description of the divine nature in Order and Disorder to defend a Calvinist conception of God. In my conclusion, I argue that the Roman source-text authors were also translators who navigated some of the same waters as their Renaissance counterparts. I end by turning to Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus for a kind of metafictional commentary on the stakes of humanist and Protestant translation in Renaissance England. iv I dedicate this book to my wife, Ashley, without whom I could have never finished it. Soli Deo Gloria. …all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one man dies, one chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language; and every chapter must be so translated; God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice; but God's hand is in every translation, and his hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again, for that library where every book shall lie open to one another. John Donne, Meditation XVII TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... ix Chapters 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................... 1 2. CONVERTING OVID: TRANSLATION, RELIGION, AND ALLEGORY IN ARTHUR GOLDING’S METAMORPHOSES................................................................. 15 2.1 Context: Protestant Opinions About Pagan Literature in the Tudor Period .............................................................................................................. 19 2.2 Context: Nationalism, Patronage, Dangerous Books, and Allegories ...... 23 2.3 Golding’s Interpretive Apparatus ............................................................. 33 2.4 Examples from the Text ............................................................................ 34 3. TRANSLATION AS ENSLAVEMENT: THOMAS DRANT, HORACE, AND JEREMIAH ....................................................................................................................... 56 3.1 Metaphors of Translation and the Medieval Tradition ............................. 61 3.2 Conquest: Real and Imagined ................................................................... 65 3.3 Drant’s Captive Horace............................................................................. 69 3.4 Drant’s Deference to Jeremiah.................................................................. 75 3.5 Roman Conquerors Conquered ................................................................. 82 4. USEFUL ENEMIES AND UNLIKELY WITNESSES: HUTCHINSON’S DE RERUM NATURA AS A SOURCE FOR ORDER AND DISORDER ............................................ 88 4.1 Lightning and Useful Enemies .................................................................. 93 4.2 A Warning Against “carnall reason” ...................................................... 103 4.3 Hutchinson Ties Her Doctrinal Enemies to Lucretius ............................ 109 4.4 Bitter Medicine and “Poisoning” the Well ............................................. 112 4.5 “The Uncomfortable shadow of death” .................................................. 119 4.6 Unlikely Witness for the Trinity ............................................................. 124 5. CONCLUSION ........................................................................................................... 139 5.1 Shakespeare............................................................................................. 143 5.2 Afterword ................................................................................................ 151 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................... 153 viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I gratefully acknowledge the help of Professors Tom Stillinger, Dennis Kezar, Richard Preiss, Michelle Wolfe, and most of all, my chair, Barry Weller. I also wish to thank the Stephensen-Canon Fellowship for supporting my research. I am grateful to my family and my God. CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION “What indeed does Athens have to do with Jerusalem?” Tertullian asked at the start of the third century of the Christian Era. He continued: What concord is there between the Academy and the Church? what between heretics and Christians? Our instruction comes from "the porch of Solomon," who had himself taught that "the Lord should be sought in simplicity of heart." Away with all attempts to produce a mottled Christianity of Stoic, Platonic, and dialectic composition! We want no curious disputation after possessing Christ Jesus, no inquisition after enjoying the gospel! With our faith, we desire no further belief.1 This line of questioning has resonated throughout Christian history. Since Christians believe that God revealed all of the truths essential for salvation in the gospel of Jesus Christ, it has been hard for them to justify turning to non-Christian sources for enlightenment, art, or beauty. Following Tertullian’s logic, rejection is the proper response to all learning that does not come from revelation. This fideism cuts Christians off from secular scholarship, even from curiosity itself, according to Tertullian. And yet, despite Tertullian’s pronouncement Christians did continue to be curious, they did continue to inquire, and they did desire something further, even after “enjoying the gospel.” They tried to find ways to accommodate secular knowledge and reason to the lessons revealed in the Bible. A century after Tertullian, Augustine of 1 Sydney Thelwall and Peter Holmes, The Writings of Quintus Sept. For Tertullianus (London: T. & T. Clark, 1884), 11: 445. 2 Hippo, himself a teacher of Roman rhetoric and a student of Greek philosophy, converted to Christianity and conceived of an avenue for accommodation between the worlds of Athens and Jerusalem. In De Doctrina Christiana, Augustine wrote, Any statements by those who are called philosophers. .which happen to be true and consistent with our faith should not cause alarm, but be claimed for our own use, as it were from owners who have no right to them. Like the treasures of the ancient Egyptians, who possessed not only idols and heavy burdens which the people of Israel hated and shunned but also vessels and ornaments of silver and gold, and clothes, which on leaving Egypt the people of Israel, in order to make better use of them, surreptitiously claimed for themselves….[S]imilarly