Novel Translations Series Editor: Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Cornell University
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Novel Translations Series editor: Peter Uwe Hohendahl, Cornell University Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought publishes new English- language books in literary studies, criticism, cultural studies, and intellectual history pertaining to the German-speaking world, as well as translations of im- portant German-language works. Signale construes “modern” in the broad- est terms: the series covers topics ranging from the early modern period to the present. Signale books are published under a joint imprint of Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library in electronic and print formats. Please see http://signale.cornell.edu/. Novel Translations The European Novel and the German Book, 1680–1730 Bethany Wiggin A Signale Book Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library Ithaca, New York Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library gratefully acknowledge the support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the publication of this volume. Copyright © 2011 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 2011 by Cornell University Press and Cornell University Library Printed in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Wiggin, Bethany, 1972– Novel translations : the European novel and the German book, 1680–1730 / Bethany Wiggin. p. cm. — (Signale : modern German letters, cultures, and thought) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-7680-8 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. German literature—French infl uences. 2. German fi ction—Early modern, 1500–1700—History and criticism. 3. German fi ction—18th century— History and criticism. 4. French fi ction—17th century—Appreciation— Germany. 5. French fi ction—18th century—Appreciation—Germany. 6. European fi ction—17th century—History and criticism. 7. European fi ction—18th century—History and criticism. I. Title. II. Series: Signale (Ithaca, N.Y.) PT123.F7W54 2010 833'.509—dc22 2010041691 Paperback printing 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 In memory of my mother, Alison Green Wiggin Contents List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Introduction. “Little French books” and the European Novel 1 1. Fashion Restructures the Literary Field 15 2. Curing the French Disease 62 3. 1688: The Roman Becomes Both Poetical and Popular 107 4. 1696: Bringing the Roman to Market 147 Conclusion. Robinson Crusoe Sails on the European Market 184 Bibliography 207 Index 235 Illustrations 1. The Funeral Procession of Allmodo and His Lady Accompanied by a Mournful Dirge (c. 1630) 26 2. Frontispiece to Balthasar Kindermann’s The German Poet (1664) 44 3. Frontispiece to Magnus Daniel Omeis’s Fundamental Introduction to the German Correct Art of Rhyme and Verse (1704) 56 4. Frontispiece to The French Tyranny, Part 2 (1677) 71 5. Frontispiece to The German Frenchman (1682) 85 6. Frontispiece to The Political and Comic Passagier (1684) 89 7. Frontispiece to The Political Lady-in-Waiting (1685) 103 8. Frontispiece to Histoire amoureuse des Gaules (1690s) 134 9. Frontispiece to the inaugural issue of Talander’s Monthly Fruits (January 1696) 154 10. Frontispiece to Talander’s The Gallant Lady’s Cabinet of Love (1694) 157 11. Frontispiece to the 1695 German translation of Aulnoy’s Relation du voyage d’Espagne (1691) 166 12. Frontispiece to Talander’s novel Amazons from the Cloister (1696) 169 13. Frontispiece to Talander’s The Gallant Lady’s Secretarial Art (1694) 182 14. Portrait of Moritz Georg Weidmann (1725) 189 15. Frontispiece and title page of the second German edition of Crusoe (1720) 196 16. Frontispiece and title page of the “fi fth” German edition of Crusoe (1720) 200 Acknowledgments I have incurred serious debts, from the fi nancial to the intellectual to those of friendship, while working on Novel Translations. A generous grant from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation enabled me to carry out research in the Herzog Ernst Bib- liothek in Gotha, Germany, especially for chapter 1. A similarly generous grant for junior faculty from the Trustees’ Council of Penn Women provided additional research support and paid for many reproductions, some of which I have happily been able to include in the following pages. A research leave for junior faculty supported by my home (German) department and granted by the University of Pennsylvania came late, but was then all the more welcome. Librarians in the Special Collections at Penn, at the Beinecke Collection at Yale, at the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, and at the Herzog Ernst Biblio- thek in Gotha offered indefatigable assistance. I would like particularly to thank Frau Röhrig and Frau Paasch in Gotha, who helped me understand the fi ner points of the collection’s catalogue and thereby fi nd materials that would otherwise have eluded my grasp. Herr Hogrefe in Wolfenbüttel again insured that my requests for reproductions were fi lled. Various audiences allowed me to try out arguments subsequently refi ned in the following explorations of things historically new and novel. Countless questions and provocative comments have, fi ttingly, made this study of the dialogic genre a genuine conversation. I am particularly grateful to members of the History of xii Acknowledgments Material Texts seminar at the University of Pennsylvania and to Peter Stallybrass for the generous invitation to present there early versions of what became the book’s fi nal two chapters. Audiences in the German departments at Penn State and Princeton also helped shape its conclusions. Fellow panelists and audience members at the Modern Languages Association and Eighteeenth-Century Studies conferences proved engaging interlocutors. In particular, Glenn Ehrstine, Lynne Tatlock, and Mara Wade led me to distill thinking that later found expression in chapters 1 and 2. Many members of the rich intellectual community at Penn provided all man- ner of support in the writing of this book. Joan DeJean scoured early drafts of two chapters, and Jerry Singerman read the early, and very long, version of the entire fi rst half, never failing also to supply encouragement. The members of the German Department deserve special thanks. Students in graduate seminars on authority and authorship in the German baroque and on the theory and practice of the novel encouraged me to develop the sudden fl ash of inspiration into cogent arguments. My colleagues Catriona MacLeod, Simon Richter, and Liliane Weissberg in par- ticular were especially helpful as I began to consider how and where to place this book. Also at Penn, Toni Bowers supplied lunch and the proof that people in the English and German departments can, and maybe should, learn more from one another. Elsewhere, generous readers came to my aid at several critical junctures. Jane Newman and Ulrike Strasser pushed me to sharpen the book’s pitch, while Gerhild Scholz Williams helped me see that I was writing a book about translation. Daniel Purdy, Kathryn Hellerstein, and Barbara Fuchs offered trenchant commentary on large sections of the prose. Good friends, I am convinced, also shape good writing. Two graduate students require my special thanks: Claire (C.J.) Jones helped gather unusually ornery materials for the bibliography, and Kristen Sincavage formatted large sections of text and introduced me to easier systems of fi le sharing. The editors of Signale and at Cornell University Press have also offered help of many kinds, from Peter Uwe Hohendahl’s early support of my project to Kizer Walker’s shepherding of the review process to Marian Rogers’s expert copyediting to Peter Potter’s willingness to include more images in the fi nal product. Most im- portantly, they also insured the manuscript received a knowledgeable review. The anonymous readers’ comments strengthened this book considerably. I would par- ticularly like to thank the reader who has become the legend known in my house- hold simply as “Reader Number 2.” Without her or his marvelously thorough and richly detailed comments and suggestions, this book would have languished in an originally byzantine chapter structure. Despite all this extensive help from expert friends and anonymous readers, the book doubtlessly contains its fl aws. Needless to say, any errors are my own. A last word of thanks is owed to those at home. Karina Garcia Passman and then Lauren Zapata insured I had the peace of mind to keep working on this paper Acknowledgments xiii baby while the real baby was in their good hands. And, most especially, David Parker Helgerson and Theodore Wiggin Helgerson patiently supported work that doubtlessly seemed to take on Sisyphean dimensions while lacking a writer with the eponymous king’s fabled craftiness. In their different ways, they both helped me keep rolling the stone up the hill, and both imagine and then fi nd happiness, too. Finally, a brief note on orthography and translations. Readers unfamiliar with early modern German materials may wonder at apparent orthographical and even grammatical idiosyncrasies. All quotations have been given exactly as in the origi- nal—except that I have used u/U, v/V, i/I, and j/J in accordance with modern norms, e and ä etc. are substituted for a etc. I have also expanded abbreviations. The early German printers’ convention of setting a forward slash (/) where we use a comma today has been retained. Similarly, printers’ use of roman letters in texts other- wise in German Fraktur (Gothic or blackface) letters is indicated here with italic. Thus a “foreign” word, such as “Roman” (romance and novel), was carefully set by German printers in roman letters and provided visual evidence distinguishing it from its Germanic neighbors, set in blackface. In a study of cultural translation, it seemed important to retain such evidence of acculturation on the printed page.