Introductory description

EN2F3-15 The Classical Tradition in English Translations: The Renaissance

Module web page

Module aims

Outline syllabus

This is an indicative module outline only to give an indication of the sort of topics that may be covered. Actual sessions held may differ.

Week 1. Introduction.
A general introduction to the field of literary translation. The class will look broadly at the theory and practice of translation in the renaissance. It will think about the difference between translating the Bible and translating ‘literary’ texts. We shall read the earliest surviving work on translation, the so-called Letter of Aristeas, and the pseudo-Ciceronian De optimo genere oratorum. We’ll look at the foundations of renaissance translation in the fifteenth century with Leonardo Bruni's short treatise on translation, the first work on the subject since Antiquity.

Week 2. Epic 1: Homer.
In this class, we shall study George Chapman’s translation of Iliad, books 1, 2, 7-11, first published together in 1598. We’ll compare this with Arthur Hall’s translation, first published in 1581.

Week 3. Epic 2: Vergil.
In this class, we shall look at four sixteenth-century translations of the fourth book of the Aeneid: Gavin Douglas (1513, printed 1553), Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey (1554), Thomas Phaer (1558), and Richard Stanyhurst (1582).

Week 4. Ovid 1: Heroides.
This week looks at Ovid’s Heroides and female complaint, including Anne Killigrew, Penelope to Ulysses; Anne Wharton, Penelope to Ulysses; Aphra Behn and John Cooper, Oenone to Paris (in Dryden’s compilation Ovid’s Epistles, 1681).

Week 5. Ovid 2: Metamorphoses.
The class will study extracts from Arthur Golding’s translation of the Metamorphoses (1565-1567).

Week 6. Reading week. No class.

Week 7. Drama 1: Euripides.
Euripides’ Phoenissae was translated into Latin in 1541, from the Latin into Italian in 1549, and then from Italian into English by George Gascoigne and Francis Kinwelmersh. This English text was acted in London in 1566 and printed in 1572. We shall study this collaborative version.

Week 8. Drama 2: Seneca the Younger.
In this session, we shall study Jasper Heywood’s translation of Seneca the Younger’s Thyestes (1560).

Week 9. Lucan.
This class will study the first book of Lucan’s Pharsalia in three verse translations: Christopher Marlowe (by 1593), Thomas May (1626) and Nicholas Rowe (1718).

Week 10. Plutarch.
We shall study extracts from Plutarch's biographies of Coriolanus, Marcus Brutus, Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, in the translation of Thomas North (1579). Some extracts will be compared with the relevant passages in Shakespeare’s plays.

Learning outcomes

By the end of the module, students should be able to:

• understand the historical development of concepts of translation, imitation and adaptation.
• understand the contribution of the classical tradition to literature in English.
• demonstrate a broad understanding of the concepts and techniques which are standard features in the discipline of translation studies.
• have knowledge of selected major genres in classical literature (e.g. epic, tragedy, biography) through major translations.
• understand and employ the main methods of enquiry in the discipline of translation studies and critically evaluate the appropriateness of different methods of enquiry.
• use a range of techniques to analyse early modern translations.
• understand how to work within, and how to question, the disciplinary boundaries of translation studies.
• apply their new understanding of early modern translations to other, later, translations they will meet outside this module.
• effectively communicate their arguments about, and analysis of, historically conditioned translations in appropriate forms.

Indicative reading list

All of the primary texts studied in the seminars will be made available to students in electronic form. Most primary literature and all of the relevant secondary literature is available via the University Library.

Secondary literature will include:

Paul Botley, Renaissance Latin Translations: Leonardo Bruni, Giannozzo Manetti and Desiderius Erasmus, Cambridge, 2004.

Roger Ellis, ed. The Medieval Translator: The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages, Cambridge, 1989.

Stuart Gillespie, English Translation and Classical Reception: Towards a New Literary History, Oxford, 2011.

Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry, New Haven, 1982.

James Hankins, ‘Translation Practice in the Renaissance: The Case of Leonardo Bruni’, in Études classiques, fasc. IV. Rencontres scientifiques de Luxembourg 1992. 3. Actes du colloque «Methodologie de la traduction: de l’antiquité à la Renaissance», ed. C. M. Ternes and M. Mund-Dopchie, Luxembourg, 1994, pp. 154-75.

Louis Kelly, The True Interpreter: A History of Translation Theory and Practice in the West, Oxford, 1979.

T. Krontiris, Oppositional Voices: Women as Writers and Translators of Literature in the English Renaissance, London, 1992.

F. O. Matthiessen, Translation: An Elizabethan Art, Cambridge, MA, 1931.

Glyn P. Norton, ‘Humanist Foundations of Translation Theory (1400-1450): A Study in the Dynamics of Word.’ Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, 8, no. 2, 1981, pp. 173-203.

Glyn P. Norton, The Ideology and Language of Translation in Renaissance France and their Humanist Antecedents, Geneva, 1984.

F. M. Rener, Interpretatio: Language and Translation from Cicero to Tytler, Amsterdam, 1989.

Neil Rhodes, ed., with Gordon Kendal and Louise Wilson, English Renaissance Translation Theory, London, 2013.

Werner Schwarz, Principles and Problems of Biblical Translation, Cambridge, 1955.

D. Uman, Women as Translators in Early Modern England, Maryland, 2012.

William H. Woodward, Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators, Cambridge, 1897. Reprinted Cambridge, 1905, 1912, 1921; New York, 1970; Toronto, 1996.

The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, vol. 1: to 1550, ed. Roger Ellis (Oxford, 2008); vol. 2: 1550-1660, ed. G. Braden, R. Cummings and S. Gillespie ( Oxford, 2010).

Subject specific skills

No subject specific skills defined for this module.

Transferable skills

No transferable skills defined for this module.