Book Series The Medieval Translator, vol. 18

Acquisition through Translation

Towards a Definition of Renaissance Translation

Alessandra Petrina, Federica Masiero (eds)

  • Pages: 380 p.
  • Size:156 x 234 mm
  • Illustrations:12 b/w
  • Language(s):English, Italian, German
  • Publication Year:2020

  • € 80,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
  • ISBN: 978-2-503-58954-1
  • Paperback
  • Available
  • € 80,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
  • ISBN: 978-2-503-58955-8
  • E-book
  • Available


The definition of translation in Renaissance Europe is here proposed as a process of acquisition: the book studies how a number of European languages, finding their identification in the newly evolving concept of nation, shape their countries’ vernacular libraries by appropriating ancient and contemporary classics.

BIO

Alessandra Petrina is Professor of English Literature at the University of Padua. Her research focuses primarily on late-medieval and early modern intellectual history, and on Anglo-Italian cultural relations. She has published, among others, The Kingis Quair (1997), Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-century England (2004), and Machiavelli in the British Isles (2009). In 2013 she edited Volume 15 of The Medieval Translator (In principio fuit interpres). She is currently working on early modern English translations of Petrarch’s Triumphi, and on early modern marginalia.

Federica Masiero graduated from the University of Padua in 1997 with a thesis on the reprint of September Testament in Adam Petri’s printing office (1522-1523). In 2004 she received her doctorate at the Free University of Berlin with a dissertation on the critical edition of the main works by Bartholomäus Ringwaldt (1530/1531-1599). From 2001 to 2006 she worked as a part time Professor of German Language at the University of Calabria. Since 2007 she has been a Senior Lecturer of German Language at the University of Padua. She has now a national abilitazione as Associate Professor.

Summary

The definition of translation in Renaissance Europe is here proposed as a process of acquisition: the book studies how a number of European languages, finding their identification in the newly evolving concept of nation, shape their countries’ vernacular libraries by appropriating ancient and contemporary classics.

The emergence of standard modern languages in early modern Europa entailed a competition with the dominant Latin culture, which remained the prevalent medium for the language of science, philosophy, theology and philology until at least the eighteenth century. In this process, translation played a very special role: in a number of significant instances we can identify in the undertaking of a specific translation a policy of acquisition of classical – and by definition authoritative – texts that contributed to the building of an intellectual library for the emerging nation. At the same time, the transmission of ideas and texts across Europe constructed a diasporic and transnational culture: the emerging vernacular cultures acquired not only the classical Latin models, incorporating them in their own intellectual libraries, but turned their attention also to contemporary, or near-contemporary, vernacular texts, conferring on them, through the act of translation, the status of classics. Through the examination of case studies, that take into account both literary and scientific texts, this volume offers an overview of how early modern Europe developed its vernacular national literatures, following the model suggested in the late Middle Ages, through a process of acquisition and translation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Alessandra Petrina (University of Padua) and Federica Masiero (University of Padua)
Introduction: acquisition through translation in early modern Europe

Biblical and classical literature in translation

Camilla Caporicci Translating Solomon’s Song: Gervase Markham’s Poem of Poems. Or Sions Muse
Bryan Brazeau ‘I write sins, not tragedies’: manuscript translations of Aristotle’s hamartia in late sixteenth-century Italy
Carla Suthren Iphigenia in English: Reading Euripides with Jane Lumley
Angelica Vedelago Plutarch in sixteenth-century France and England: an insight into the Life of Coriolanus as translated by Amyot and North
Marta Balzi Lodovico Dolce’s Italian translation of Ovid’s Metamorphoses and the canonization of the Orlando furioso
Francesco Roncen Stesso corpo in ‘cangiate forme’: traduzione fedele e ottava rima nelle Metamorfosi di Fabio Marretti (1570)
Ilaria Pernici The revolution of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Golding’s translation: the case of Thomas Lodge
Petr Valenta Virgil in Czech seventeenth-century translations and Pastýřské rozmlouvání o narození Páně by Václav Jan Rosa

Horizontal translation and the definition of literature

Valentina Gallo Dall’Agrigento del III sec. a.C. alla Londra di Jonathan Swift
Giulio Vaccaro Tra traduzione, tradizione e identità: il Libro dell’Aquila
Lucia Assenzi Übersetzen für die Muttersprache. Übersetzung und Fremdwortpurismus in der barocken Sprachreflexion am Beispiel der Verdeutschung des Novellino (1624)
Andrea RadoševićMarijana Horvat Translation strategies in the Sermon Collection Besjede (1616) written by the Franciscan Matija Divković
Alice Equestri The first English translation of Tommaso Garzoni’s Ospidale De’ Pazzi Incurabili: cultural context and representation of idiocy

Heritage and archives at the close of the early modern period

Dominika Bopp Das Sprachlehrbuch Janua linguarum reserata von J.A. Comenius (1592-1670) und seine ersten deutschsprachigen Übersetzungen
Roberto De Pol Il contributo dell'editore Georg Müller e del traduttore Johann Makle alla ricezione della letteratura italiana in Germania nel XVII secolo
Anna Just Übersetzungstexte aus der ehemaligen Bibliotheca Zalusciana (1747-1795) als Indikator einer transnationalen Literatur im frühneuzeitlichen Polen