At The Interface Between Translation History and Literary History

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At the interface between translation

history and literary history: a
genealogy of the theme of progress
in seventeenth-century English
translation history and criticism
a
Marie-Alice Belle
a
Dpartement de Linguistique et Traduction, Universit de
Montral, C. P. 6128, succ. Centre-ville, Montral (QC) H3C 3J7,
Canada
Published online: 15 May 2014.
To cite this article: Marie-Alice Belle (2014) At the interface between translation history and
literary history: a genealogy of the theme of progress in seventeenth-century English translation
history and criticism, The Translator, 20:1, 44-63, DOI: 10.1080/13556509.2014.899093
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At the interface between translation history and literary history:

a genealogy of the theme of progress in seventeenth-century English
translation history and criticism
Marie-Alice Belle*
Dpartement de Linguistique et Traduction, Universit de Montral,

C. P. 6128, succ. Centre-ville, Montral (QC) H3C 3J7, Canada
The study of English translation from the perspective of literary history suffers at times
from a lack of critical attention to the construction of translation discourses through history.
Insufficient awareness of the paratexts of translation has sometimes resulted in avoidable
forms of anachronism and, perhaps more problematically, the failure to identify the
discursive strategies at work in the margins of literary translations has led to rather
simplifying narratives of linear progress. This paper focuses on the theme of progress
as a discursive strategy in major seventeenth-century English translations of Classical
literature. The aim is to establish a genealogy of this trope by exploring the ideological,
cultural or aesthetic tensions that the discourse on improvement or restoration may
disguise. Particular attention is devoted to the role played by these topoi in the increasingly
competitive culture of translation developing in seventeenth-century England, and to their
ties with the emerging neoclassical discourse on literary history. Ultimately, the paper aims
to demonstrate the benefits of a keener historiographical consciousness among historians
of English literary translation, and to suggest some methodological tools for a duly
historicised study of literary translations over the medium or long term.
Keywords: discourse; genealogy; retranslation; Virgil; neoclassicism; Denham;
Waller; Dryden
As clearly demonstrated by the impending completion of the prestigious, five-volume

Oxford History of Literary Translation into English (20052014 (vol. 5 is forthcoming)),
the past few decades have been marked by increased attention on the part of literary
historians to the role of translation in the development of the English literary tradition.
The focus on English translation has not only offered literary translators the kind of
visibility championed in Lawrence Venutis influential work (1995), but has also con-
tributed to a renewal of the scope and methods of literary history. For instance, key
translations play a central role in Charles Martindales redefinition of the history of
English literary reception (2004). Similarly, Paul Davis has underlined the importance
of translation as a distinct mode of imaginative conduct and highlighted its place among
the authorial practices of key Augustan literary figures (Davis 2008, 3). The authors of the
Oxford History of Literary Translation into English have also drawn attention to the
interface between early modern and neoclassical English translation practices and the
emerging English literary identity and textual canon (Cummings 2010; Coldiron 2010;
Gillespie 2005). More recently, Stuart Gillespie has called for a new literary history that
*Email: marie-alice.belle@umontreal.ca
2014 Taylor & Francis

The Translator 45
fully acknowledges the role of Classical translators in the shaping of English literary
traditions (Gillespie 2011).
Yet the study of English translation from the perspective of literary history suffers at
times from a lack of critical attention to the construction of translation discourses through
history. Such is the case in Robin Sowerbys otherwise masterly study of seventeenth-
century translations of the Aeneid (2006), where Denhams and Wallers translations are
presented as examples of the early Augustan taste, which would gradually reach its
maturity with Dryden and Pope. Sowerby (2010) offers a similar perspective in his critical
edition of Denham and Wallers translations of the Aeneid, where he consistently comments
on the improvements achieved in each successive version of Virgils poem. In both cases,
however, he fails to comment on the fact that his selection of texts, his critical criteria and
the paradigm of linear progress that he wholeheartedly embraces all constitute key strategies
in the construction of the English neoclassical discourse on literary translation. The ten-
dency to assimilate translation within narratives of the development of English literature can
also be observed, although to a much lesser extent, in Stuart Gillespies new literary
history (2011). For example, his analysis of the consecutive renderings of the Horatian
beatus ille trope by seventeenth-century translators rightly underlines the cumulative and
dialogical aspects of Classical retranslation; yet his concern with the development of an
English translating tradition (ibid., 40) tends to underplay the increasingly competitive
conditions in which translators wrote and published their works.
The historiographical problems posed by such an approach to English translation seem
to justify the concern voiced by translation historians in the last few decades about a
certain lack of history in translation history (Pym 1992, 234; see also Foz 2006; Malena
2011). While warning researchers against the proliferation of isolated and unrelated
evidence, recent studies on the methodology of translation history have been just as
critical towards the writing of simplifying, and often anachronistic, narratives of linear
progress (Pym 1992; DHulst 1995; Foz 2006). Nowhere is the rejection of a teleological
approach to translation history as clear as in the recent debates on the issue of retransla-
tion, as Antoine Bermans initial hypothesis of a gradual progression towards a fuller and
more faithful rendering of literary texts through their consecutive translations (Berman
1995, 2009) has been replaced by theories stressing the multiplicity of human, historical,
social and material factors involved in the retranslation of a given text (Susam-Sarajeva
2003; St. Andr 2003; Venuti 2004; Brownlie 2006). Such studies have demonstrated the
importance of maintaining a certain critical distance from the paradigm of progress, which
Venuti rightly identifies as but one of the many discursive genres which scholars and
critics may adopt, either voluntarily or unconsciously, when composing their accounts of
translation history (Venuti 2004, 1991).
Perhaps one of the most powerful antidotes to the teleological reading of translation
history resides in the approach outlined by Michel Foucault in his seminal analysis of the
Nietzschean concept of genealogy and its implications for the writing of history (Foucault
1971, 1977). Whereas the traditional, idealist narratives of historians history (lhistoire
des historiens, Foucault 1971, 159) focus on major figures and events, the genealogical
method relies instead on the unearthing of the material, physical and banal in a word, the
all-too-human origins of historical trends and phenomena. While the examination of the
social, material and ideological origins of the English literary canon has traditionally been
at the heart of historical research in translation studies,1 Foucaults genealogical approach
has been more explicitly embraced by historians of English translation in the past two
decades. Rita Copeland has thus offered a social genealogy of the discourse on transla-
tion developed by the authors of the Wycliffe Bible, showing how the Lollards
46 M.-A. Belle
controversial attitudes to property and community permeated their translation practices, as

well as the paratexts of the first complete English Bible (Copeland 1997). More famously
perhaps, Lawrence Venuti has also attempted to offer Foucauldian genealogies of transla-
tion theory, both in his analyses of Schleiermachers statements on translation (Venuti
1991, 1991), and in his influential study, The Translators Invisibility (1995). In the latter
case, Venutis inquiry into the origins of the social and material invisibility of translation
in the Anglo-Saxon literary industry leads him to locate the emergence of a discourse on
fluency and transparency within the political and social struggles of mid-seventeenth-
century Britain (Venuti 1995, 56ff).
In this paper, I wish to subject the English neoclassical discourse on progress to a
similar line of analysis. By definition, the idea of progress represents a key element in the
writing of the teleological narratives of monumental history (Foucault 1971, 168). More
importantly, however, the theme represents one of the major tropes in the English
discourse on literary history and translation, and is truly situated at the interface between
these two modes of historical narrative. As early as Puttenhams Art of English Poetry
(1589) and Sidneys Defence of Poesy (1595), accounts of the English literary tradition
significantly identified translators, in particular Surrey and Wyatt, as the first refiners of
the English tongue (Smith 1904, 242). Following the development of the early modern
rhetoric of translation as imitation, rebirth and assimilation, seventeenth-century transla-
tors of the Classical literary canon were hailed as the Virgils, Horaces and Homers of a
new golden age of English literature (Hermans 1985). The theme of improving upon
precedents emerged with particular force in the 1650s among translators John Denham,
Abraham Cowley and Edmund Waller, who explicitly distanced themselves from their
Elizabethan predecessors and sought to pursue a new way of rendering the Classics based
on the principle of free translation. The construction of genealogies of literary translation
was to become a key feature of the neoclassical, Augustan age, whose theoreticians
often themselves involved in the art of translation, such as Dryden, Pope and later
Johnson fashioned themselves as the heirs of Denham and Waller, who were celebrated
in their turn as fathers and improvers of the English art of poetry (Sowerby 2010, 11).
Despite being crucial to the making of English literary narratives, the discourse on the
progress of English poetry and translation has not previously been singled out as an object
of critical study. Although Venuti highlights Denhams eloquent proposal of an improved
new way of translating Virgil (Denham 1656, sig. [A2]v), he mainly reads it in terms of
the ideal of fluency which it seeks to promote, without fully exploring the dynamics of
contrast and differentiation that underlie the claims of novelty (Venuti 1995, 44ff).
Similarly, Venuti notes Drydens creation of a genealogy of translation in his preface to
Ovids Epistles (1680), yet he does not examine the strategies of selection and hierarchisa-
tion at work in the creation of an English translation tradition (Venuti 2005, 812). A close
scrutiny of such strategies is all the more important as the discourse on the supposed
progress of English poetry through translation crystallised at a time of unprecedented
cultural and commercial competition among literary translators. In the second half of the
seventeenth century, printed translations of the Classics represented an important share of
the rapidly expanding literary market. Not only did they offer a growing middle-class
readership easy access to ancient learning and culture, they also provided poets and
translators established or new with an opportunity to advertise their talents. In this
newly commercialized literary world (Gillespie and Wilson 2005, 39), the circulation of
ancient texts in several parallel versions created a context of cultural emulation, in which
translators sought to differentiate themselves along aesthetic, social and ideological lines.
In such conditions, the selection, critical appraisal and recuperation of precedents
The Translator 47
represented a powerful way for translators to locate themselves within the emerging
genealogies of English literature, which they also helped to fashion.
I will revisit here the case of three canonical translations: the successive renderings of
Virgils Aeneid by Waller, Denham and Dryden. As noted above, all three translators were
praised in their day as harbingers of the neoclassical taste in England, and their experiments
with rhyme, metre and diction singled them out as major contributors to the codification of the
English epic mode in the Augustan age. They also represent figures of great historical
significance in translation theory, since Waller and Denhams new way of translating, as
well as Drydens paraphrase, form the main tenets of the neoclassical approach to transla-
tion. Yet rather than locate them, as Sowerby does, within a traditional history of the English
art of poetry, I shall examine the social, ideological and material conditions that underlie the
making of the canon and its supporting discourses. As Venuti notes, the retranslation of
ancient epics in neoclassical England represents a case of creation of value, cultural as well
as material (Venuti 2004, 34; see also Lefevere 1998). My point will be to establish how such
value was created, by identifying the discursive strategies deployed in the margins of
translations, highlighting their material and social contexts, and examining the dynamics of
retranslation (Foz and Serrano 2005) as a key element in the making of the narratives of
literary and translation history. In so doing, I shall seek to write a dynamic, fully historicised
counter-narrative capable of challenging the teleological perspective that still tends to prevail
among historians of literary translation.2
1. Active retranslations and the fashioning of literary taste in the 1650s and 1660s
In the preface to his 1666 miscellany of translations from Horace, Alexander Brome
compares the Latin poet to his contemporary Virgil, who, being plundered of all his
Ornaments by the old Translatours, was restored to others with double lustre by those
Standard-bearers of Wit and Judgment, Denham and Waller (Brome 1666, sig. [A6]v). He
illustrates his point by providing excerpts of Book II of Virgils Aeneid, first in Thomas
Phaers 1558 translation and then in John Denhams version published in 1656 as The
Destruction of Troy, and emphatically concludes: By which you may perceive how highly
Translations may be improved (ibid., Bromes emphasis).
While Bromes notion of restoring Virgil echoes Abraham Cowleys famous defini-
tion of his libertine style of translating ancient authors, where he claimed that their
beauties could only be redeemed by the translators personal touches (Cowley 1656, sig.
Aaa2r), his judgement on the improvement of translation can be traced to Denhams own
prefatory statements. In his laudatory poem to Richard Fanshawes 1647 English version
of Guarinis Pastor Fido, Denham had already portrayed the court poet as a pioneer of
translation, far superior to his predecessors: A new and nobler way thou doest pursue/To
make translations and translators too They but preserve the ashes, thou the flame/True
to his sense, but truer to his fame (Fanshawe 1647, sig. (a)r). In 1656, Denham similarly
articulated his own nobler way of translating Virgils Aeneid by actively distancing
himself from previous attempts (Denham 1656, sig. A2r):
There are so few translations which deserve praise that I scarce ever saw any which deserved
pardon ... neither has any author been more hardly dealt with than this our Master; and the
reason is evident, for what is most excellent is most inimitable ... but if I can do Virgil less
injury than others have done, it will be in some degree to do him right.
48 M.-A. Belle
Two years later, Edmund Wallers partial translation from book IV of the Aeneid was to be
presented in an equally competitive light. Published in 1658 under the title The Passion of
Dido for Aeneas Translated by Edmund Waller and Sidney Godolphin, Esqrs, the text is
prefaced by a foreword most probably composed by Wallers publisher, Humphrey
Moseley explicitly referring to the plurality of versions then available to the reader:
This fourth Book ... has been translated into all Languages, and in our dayes at least ten
times by severall Pens, into English. It is freely left to the Reader, which he will prefer
(Waller and Godolphin 1658, sig. [A6]v).
The direct address to the reader, both in Bromes preface and in this latter case, reflects
the habit, common in seventeenth-century literary circles, to compare different versions of
the same text (Van Eerde 1976, 26). It also indicates that Denhams and Wallers translations
should be read as what Anthony Pym terms active retranslations; that is, rewritings of a
source text that directly address contemporary or near-contemporary parallel versions (1998,
824). Some of the versions of the Aeneid then circulating on the English book market were
indeed quite antiquated Phaers Elizabethan version was re-issued for the last time in
1620; yet more recent precedents included full translations, such as John Vicars 1632
Twelve Aeneids of Virgil and the complete works of Virgil in English by John Ogilby (1649,
1654), and partial versions, such as Robert Stapyltons 1634 Dido and Aeneas and the
Fourth book of the Aeneis (1648) by court poet Richard Fanshawe, who dedicated it to the
young prince Charles shortly before the death of Charles I.
The political significance of translating Virgil in Royalist circles during the Civil Wars
and the Interregnum has been fully documented (Patterson 1987; Venuti 1995; Belle
2007). One of the functions of Denhams free mode of translation was actually to inscribe
his Royalist sympathies within the text of his English Virgil, and it is therefore probably
quite safe to surmise that, among the translations which could not deserve [] pardon,
Denham counted John Vicars English Aeneids, which were deeply tinged with the
Presbyterian schoolmasters militantly anti-Catholic views (Belle 2007). The 1658
Passion of Dido and Aeneas is also clearly associated with the Royalist camp. Its joint
authors, Sidney Godolphin and Edmund Waller, were both prominent poets at the
Caroline court, and while Wallers political allegiances had proved rather ambiguous,3
Godolphin was often presented as a young martyr to the Royalist cause, having been
killed in battle in the early days of the Civil War. The publisher, Humphrey Moseley, was
himself one of the main producers of printed Royalist material (Potter 1989). Richard
Fanshawes 1648 translation of the same book of the Aeneid had actually been printed in
his shop, and Moseley was here again most probably happy to capitalize (Kastan 2007,
118) on the celebrity of both translators in Royalist circles.
However, the strategies of differentiation at work in the paratexts of Denhams
Destruction of Troy and the Godolphin/Waller Passion of Dido are not only based on
political allegiance. One important precedent in terms of Virgilian translation one that
Denham, Waller and Moseley, as well as their readers, could not fail to have had in mind
was John Ogilbys 1654 English edition of the complete works of Virgil. A first transla-
tion had been published in 1649, followed in 1654 by a lavish in-folio volume, complete
with illustrations and marginal notes, which achieved considerable commercial success
(Van Eerde 1976, 35). This was also a Royalist Virgil, as first advertised in the dedication
of the 1649 version to William, Lord Seymour and confirmed by the inclusion, in the
illustrations for the 1654 edition, of the names and coats of arms of various members of
the English aristocracy who had helped finance the production of Ogilbys expensive
volume (Van Eerde 1976; Patterson 1987, 170). This precedent was indirectly acknowl-
edged by Moseley not only in the foreword to the translation but also through the
The Translator 49
frontispiece illustration of the 1658 Passion of Dido, an engraving by Franz Cleyn

representing the death of Dido which was borrowed from the Ogilby edition. The
popularity of Ogilbys volume, as well as the more or less direct indications provided in
the prefaces and paratexts to Denhams and Wallers translations, invite us to look further
into their claims to have done better justice to the ancient poet.
Perhaps the most obvious grounds for improvement resided in the stylistic and
metrical aspects of the poem. As Sowerby has fully demonstrated, the early modern
reception of Virgil consistently defined his poetry in terms of careful diction, polished
style and harmonious numbers (Sowerby 2006). As early as the 1640s, John Denham and
Edmund Waller had become recognised in English literary circles for these very same
qualities. With his 1642 poem Coopers Hill, Denham had fully illustrated the suitability
of the heroic couplet as an equivalent to Virgils hexameters, while Wallers name had
already been identified with polished diction and flowing numbers (Chernaik 1968). The
shift towards a smoother, more regular metrical rendering of Virgils hexameters can
easily be discerned through a comparison of Denhams and Wallers translations with the
work of their direct predecessor and competitor John Ogilby. In Ogilbys 1654 Works
of Virgil, the apparition of the sea-monster that is about to kill Laocoon and his sons in
Aeneid II is rendered as follows (Ogilby 1654, 205):
When two huge Serpents through the quiet Flood

(Whose mention curdles now my frigthed [sic] Blood)
With vast Infoldings briny Waves divide
And to our Shores from Tenedos did glide
Their speckled Breasts plow up the Frothy Brine,
And bloody Crests ore curled Azure shine.4
Denham offers at once a more dignified diction, subtler rhymes and an easier rhythm
(1656, 11):
When two prodigious Serpents were descride,

Whose circling stroaks the Seas smooth face divide,
Above the deep they raise their scaly Crests,
And stemme the flood with their erected breasts
Similarly, the evocation of Didos death in book IV demonstrates Wallers skill in

designing harmonious verse. Ogilbys version reads: Thus saying, her falln upon the
Sword they spyde,/Which bloody blushd, her Hands in Crimson dyde (Ogilby 1654,
286). Although Waller has the same rhyme, the iambic metre runs significantly more
smoothly, with alternating consonants and vowels, and a regular caesura after the fourth
syllable: With this the blood came rushing from her side/Deep in her breast the reeking
sword was dyd (Waller and Godolphin 1658, sig. Fv).
While in sole terms of versification, Denham and Wallers versions clearly bear
witness to the development of the neoclassical norms of harmony and balance, the issue
of diction is more complex. Ogilby consistently favours the periphrases and ornate diction
inherited from early seventeenth-century Euphuism and revived in the 1630s with the
vogue of the prcieux pastoral genre at Queen Henrietta Marias court. Such an influence,
as well as Ogilbys awareness of the female readership of his translations, probably
motivated his choice of Frothy Brine and curld Azure for Virgils fluctus (the
waves) and pontum (the sea), or the metaphors of the blushing sword and Crimson
blood.
50 M.-A. Belle
Denhams and Wallers soberer alternatives (the sea, the deep, blood, reeking
sword) testify to a major aesthetic shift which was taking place in England in the 1650s.
While court poetics had long been dominated by the Cavalier aesthetic of wit charac-
terised by verbal brilliance, ornate language and daring metaphors, epic theorists of the
1650s such as Thomas Hobbes and William Davenant proceeded to redefine the notion of
wit, insisting that invention should be balanced and controlled by the rules of verisimi-
litude and decorum (Cottegnies 1997, 345). Denham and Wallers stately versions
obviously reflect these new theories of the epic genre, as does Bromes acknowledgement
of both translators as Standard-bearers of Wit and Judgment (Brome 1666, sig. [A6]v).
However, what should be stressed here again is that the neoclassical aesthetic defined in
Denhams and Wallers translations was but one of the competing literary models in the
1650s. The earlier courtly mode was to remain popular well into the second half of the
seventeenth century, as shown by the enduring success not only of Ogilbys Virgil, but
also of Richard Fanshawes ornate translations from Virgil and other lyric and dramatic
poets favoured at the Caroline court (Cottegnies 2003).
That Denhams and Wallers aesthetic model came to be consistently praised among
seventeenth-century literary critics and translators can partly be attributed to the material
history of their translations. As Kastan has convincingly argued, Humphrey Moseleys
printing strategies in the 1640s and 1650s were crucial not only in the establishment of
Edmund Waller as a major literary figure, but in the very fashioning of the English literary
canon (Kastan 2007). By far the most prolific printer of his time, Moseley had recognised
the emerging demand for printed literary works and had proceeded to create standardised
collections of drama and poetry in a regularised format and appearance (ibid., 114). By the
1650s, Moseley had already printed two editions of Wallers poems, capitalising at once
on Wallers notoriety as a court poet and public figure and on the fact that his uvre had
only been circulating in manuscript, albeit extensively. The publication of Wallers poetry
was without doubt instrumental in establishing him as a literary authority rather than an
occasional, coterie poet (ibid., 121). However, it is quite possible that Wallers known
associations with the closed literary circles of the Stuart court were also advantageous.
It has been shown that as the print trade became fully established in the seventeenth
century, a culture that favoured the manuscript endured, especially among aristocratic
circles wishing to avoid what has become known as the stigma of print. As Adrian Johns
has demonstrated, publication was often perceived as a threat to aristocratic identity,
which had to remain independent from material or commercial concerns: as Robert
Burton noted, the good name of a gentleman should never lie in the powers of a
Bookseller (Johns 1998, 1767). Wallers name was indeed to remain in such powers
for several years, since it was not before 1664, when three editions of his poems had
already appeared, that he issued an authorised version of his works (Kastan 2007, 115).
Moseleys 1644 edition was itself published a few months after the first unauthorised
edition by Thomas Walkley. Moseley differentiated his own edition from Walkleys by
claiming that it was based on better manuscript sources; that is, Printed by a Copy of
[Wallers] own hand-writing (ibid., 116). Moseleys access to autograph manuscripts is
advertised again in the foreword to the 1658 Passion of Dido, where he underlines the fact
that Godolphins version, now completed by Waller, was not intended for publication
(Waller and Godolphin 1658, sig. [A7]r):
This was done (all but a very little) by that incomparable person, as well for virtue as for wit,
Mr. Sidney Godolphin only for his own divertion [sic], and with lesse care, then [sic] so exact
a judgment as his would have used, if he had intended it should have ever been made publick.
The Translator 51
Moseleys repeated references to his manuscript sources can be interpreted not only as a
show of good editorial practice but also as an attempt to bridge the gap between a closed
manuscript culture, accessible only to select members of the literary and social elite, and
the wider readership of printed Classical translations. More specifically, Moseley seems to
have been interested in offering a printed version that could benefit from the social as well
as the intellectual aura of the learned aristocratic circles in which Godolphin and Waller
had become famous.
In this light, the oblique reference to Ogilbys 1654 Virgil can also be construed as a
strategy of social differentiation. Ogilby is likely to have been considered an upstart by the
British nobility: he had started his career as a dancer at King James court, had moved on to
be the manager of Dublins first playhouse and, following the closure of the theatres, had re-
fashioned himself in the 1640s as a self-published editor and translator of Classical texts a
career move which was to make his fortune and secure him a position at Charles IIs court
(Van Eerde 1976). The commercial success of his translations was in great part due to his
skill in responding to the expanding readership of Classical texts and translations, at a time
when familiarity with these texts, or at least the possession of a well-bound edition,
represented a mark of social status (Gillespie and Wilson 2005; Van Eerde 1976, 57). The
publication of Ogilbys illustrated folio in 1654 had been preceded by a vast subscription
campaign which had attracted not only former members of the court, but also less
distinguished persons who wished to be associated with this early venture in cultural
marketing and have their name printed on the pages of this conspicuous volume. That
Ogilbys Virgil was a bit of a sensation can be deduced from Anthony Woods immediate
description of the volume as the fairest ever produced in England, as well as from the
many pirate versions that followed in its wake (Van Eerde 1976, 35ff). By contrast,
Moseleys discreet yet elegant octavo, published in the same format as Wallers poems
(note that Wallers name is presented first, although the translation is attributed, all but very
little, to Godolphin), was easy to market as a more tasteful alternative to Ogilbys volume
one that could be seen to restore Virgil to the aristocratic circles in which Wallers and
Godolphins poetic wit and judgment were preferred (Brome 1666, sig. [A6]v).5
While Wallers traditionally recognised role in the birth of neoclassical literary taste is
closely bound with his printers strategies of demarcation, one should also examine the
context in which Denhams name, literary manner and translation style became so closely
associated with Wallers. John Denhams reputation as a translator of Virgil had been
established by his 1656 Destruction of Troy, together with his earlier manuscript translations
from books II, IV and VI of the Aeneid (Sowerby 2010). A revised version of passages from
Aeneid IV was published for the first time in the 1668 edition of Denhams Poems and
Translations, under the title The Passion of Dido for Aeneas (Denham 1668, 128). The
title clearly echoes the Waller/Godolphin translation, a precedent made all the more relevant
as, in his authorised 1664 edition of his Poems, Waller had included the passages from
Aeneid IV that Moseley had printed in the 1658 volume. Thus the reference to Waller
implicit in Denhams choice of title can be read as a homage to the poet, of whom Denham
professed to be a great admirer: a few months before he had published a long poem in
imitation of Mr Waller (Denham 1667). This is the interpretation put forward by Denhams
modern editor Theodore Banks, who notes that in Denhams incomplete version of Aeneid
IV, many of the missing passages correspond to the lines whose translation was included in
Wallers 1664 Poems. He concludes that since the poets were friends, Denham probably
omitted these lines to avoid competing with Waller, and that the reader was implicitly
directed to the latters translation by Denhams title (Denham 1969, 39). That Denham
should have wished to present his translation as a complement to Wallers published version
52 M.-A. Belle
is in itself indicative of the advantages that a poet, even one already so well-established,
could derive from advertising his literary connections with such a renowned figure as
Waller. However, one cannot exclude the possibility that Denhams professed admiration
for Waller also involved emulation, and that the allusion to the Godolphin/Waller translation
may also constitute an invitation for the reader to compare, and judge, which he w[ould]
prefer (Waller and Godolphin 1658, sig. [A6]v).
In Sowerbys comparative analyses of Denhams manuscript and printed versions of
Aeneid IV, what emerges most vividly is the development of Denhams distinctive
metrical and stylistic features: first, the closing of the couplet that is, the alignment
of metrical and grammatical units within the frame of rhyming decasyllables; second, his
use of echoing phrases and parallel structures within the couplet; and third, what would
become known as his strong lines, characterised by a steady iambic rhythm and mascu-
line rhymes (Sowerby 2006, 2010, 156). These were the features which later critics,
notably Dryden, were to identify as Denhams pioneering contributions to the develop-
ment of the English heroic couplet. Revealingly enough, these are also the elements on the
basis of which Sowerby judges Denhams contribution as way in advance of anything in
the early Augustans, including, of course, Waller (Sowerby 2006, 108). All three
characteristics of Denhams improved metrical skills can be observed in his subsequent
English renderings of Didos curse, at the end of Aeneid IV.6 Denhams first translation
reads: let seas & shores to shores be opposite/And armes to armes & let our offspring
fight (in Sowerby 2010, 72). The 1668 edition instead reads: Our Seas, our Shores, our
Armies theirs oppose/And may our Children be for ever Foes (Denham 1668, 141).
Although the revised version bears all the marks of Denhams mature versifying technique
and of his growing freedom from the Latin original, his amendments to the earlier
manuscript cannot solely be read in terms of his developing mastery of the couplet. In
Waller and Godolphins 1658 Passion of Dido, these very same lines were translated as
Our seas their seas, our shores their shores oppose/Our armes their armes, and be our
Children foes (Waller and Godolphin 1658, sig. [E7]v). Denham obviously drew on
Wallers version, and it is quite difficult here to decide whether the echo was simply
designed as a friendly homage to Waller. In these few overlapping lines, Denham at once
recalls the precedent established by his fellow poet and casts his own version as a
vigorous alternative to Wallers celebrated verse.
While Denhams and Wallers versions from the Aeneid can indeed be described as
major factors in the establishment of neoclassical literary, aesthetic and interpretive norms
such as fluency, decorum and metrical regularity, what emerges from the paratexts of these
translations is their competitive nature. Their relationship to one another, as well as to other
contemporary versions of Virgils poem, confirms what theorists have identified as the
intertextual, or dialogical, nature of retranslations (St. Andr 2003; Venuti 2004; Brownlie
2006). Furthermore, the often indirect way in which translators or their publishers
position their work in relation to recent precedents points to the complexity and the
multiplicity of factors that determined not only the poets decision to retranslate, but also
the success of their new, improved versions. In the context of the social and political, as
well as literary and aesthetic tensions that marked the 1650s and 1660s, the making of
neoclassical taste can certainly not be understood as the result of a linear evolution of
English poetics, and probably not even as an indicator of dominant cultural norms. Instead,
it appears that the a posteriori characterisation of Denham and Waller as standard-bearers of
the new, neoclassical aesthetic was greatly aided by the strategic positioning of their
translations as the products of a select circle of learned friends a social as well as
intellectual elite with which the expanding readership of translations certainly wished to
The Translator 53
be associated. What remains to be established now is the extent to which such strategies of
association and differentiation were involved in the canonisation of Denham and Waller as
fathers of the English art of poetry and of translation (Dryden 1693/1974, 84) by the
generation of Classical translators that emerged in the 1680s and 1690s.
2. Roscommon, Dryden and the genealogies of English Neoclassicism

In 1684, the Earl of Roscommon, who in 1680 had published a celebrated translation of
Horaces Art of Poetry, issued his no less famous Essay on Translated Verse, in which he
praised the generation of translators who graced this new Augustan age of English literature.
Beyond the codification of neoclassical, fluent translation practices (Hopkins 2005), the
poem is emblematic of English Restoration literary discourse in the way in which it
recuperates Classical precedents in order to articulate its own values. While Horace, Ovid
and Theocritus are presented as successfully transplanted into England (Roscommon
1684, 3), Virgil is hailed as the sacred Founder of our Rules (ibid., 21), in a no less
characteristic shift from the art of translation to the art of poetry.
The identification of seventeenth-century poets with Classical authors, in particular

Virgil, has been shown to have played a major role in the fashioning of Restoration
England as a new Augustan Age that would equal the splendours of Rome under
Augustus (Hammond 2006; Davis 2004; Gillespie 2005). More particularly, the creation
of genealogies of translated verse served a double purpose: not only did Classical translators
participate in the public invention of Augustan Culture (Davis 2004, 75); they also
benefited from the new lustre conveyed to their own works by the ongoing celebration of
their ancient models. The reciprocal relation (Hammond 2002; Gillespie 2005, 16) thus
established between Classics and their new versions was essential in the canonisation of
Roscommons and Drydens translations in the 1680s and 1690s (Hammond 2006; Gillespie
2005). Yet the establishment of a canon of English translated verse was also aided by the
selective re-issuing, throughout the second half of the seventeenth century, of earlier authors
in particular Cowley, Waller and Denham all of whom had their works reprinted well
into the 1690s (Hammond 2006, 56). The creation of an easily accessible translating
tradition (Gillespie 2005, 17) thus allowed translators to situate themselves not only in
relation to their predecessors, ancient or modern, but also towards one another. As Paul
Hammond has noted, Drydens quarrel with his rival, Thomas Shadwell, was revealingly
articulated in terms of who was the genuine heir to ancient culture and poetic spirit
(Hammond 2002, 405).
Translation historians often comment on the vertical dimension, so to speak, of these
lines of literary descent, but their implications in terms of contemporary hierarchies of
translated verse have less often been considered. The first element I wish to underline here
is the way in which Augustan re-fashionings of the theme of progress served to establish a
specifically English translating tradition, in a context of European cultural competition. It
is quite striking that Roscommons praise of the British Muse should start with an account
of the historical and geographical progress of translated verse through Europe, from its
first successes in Italy to the French accomplishments of the 1650s, which were only to be
superseded by Englands nobler way (Roscommon 1684, 3):
From thence [France] our genrous Emulation came,

We undertook, and we performd the same
But now, We shew the World a Nobler way,
And in Translated Verse, do more than They.
54 M.-A. Belle
While Roscommon draws here on an ancient theme, that of the translatio or transfer
of cultures from east to west, there is also an obvious reference to Denhams new, and
nobler way of translating (see above). The allusion serves, of course, to reinforce
contemporary representations of the poet as a pioneer of neoclassical translation, and
thus to differentiate a specifically English art of translating Virgil, inherited from Denham,
from the French tradition that became established in the late 1640s and 1650s.
Echoes of this situation of cultural emulation between England and the Continental
countries, in particular France and Italy, can also be detected in the paratexts of Drydens
translations from Virgil. Dryden assumes an explicitly competitive stance in the preface to the
1697 Aeneid, where he declares his translation to be intended for the honour of my Country;
and therefore I will boldly own, that this English Translation has more of Virgils Spirit in it,
than either the French, or the Italian (Dryden 1697/1987, 325). It has often been remarked
that Dryden made great use of French Virgilian critics such as Boileau, Segrais and Le Bossu,
all of whom had published influential commentaries on heroic poetry, together with various
translations or imitations from the Latin classic. However, Dryden explicitly distances himself
from French translation practices, mentioning for example that Segrais preface is so
wonderfully good, yet is wholly destitute of Elevation (Dryden 1697/1987, 323). Drydens
critique of French precedents here again takes the shape of a defence of an English translating
and poetic tradition. For example, when explaining his use of triplet rhymes, he invokes the
names of Spenser, Chapman and Cowley (ibid., 331), declaring:
I regard them now as the Magna Charta of Heroick Poetry; and am too much an English-man
to lose what my Ancestors have gaind for me. Let the French and the Italians value
themselves of their Regularity: Strength and Elevation are our Standard. I said before, and
I repeat it, that the affected purity of the French, has unsinewd their Heroick Verse.
By separating the French values of affected purity from a robust, English standard,
Dryden addresses here one of the major critical debates of the times that is, the influence
of the increasingly codified rules of poetic versification established in France after
Malherbe. This gradual standardisation of French poetry had been given its own genealogy
in Nicolas Boileaus 1674 Art Potique, where the French critic hailed Malherbe as both the
culminating point of a long lineage of poets and the long-awaited founder of a new
aesthetic: Enfin Malherbe vint, qui le premier en France,/Fit sentir dans les vers une
juste cadence (Boileau 1674/1966, 160). In his own rendition of Boileaus poem, Dryden
had revealingly transposed the statement to England, replacing the names of the French
poets originally invoked with those of Spenser, Fairfax, Davenant and, finally, Waller:
Waller came last, but was the first whose Art/Just Weight and Measure did to Verse impart
(Dryden and Soames 1683, 89). To return to the 1697 preface to the Aeneid, Dryden also
invokes an English tradition when discussing another bone of contention among French and
English literary critics; that is, the issue of diction. Regarding the French, Dryden notes that
The language of an Epick Poem is almost wholly figurative: Yet they [the French] are so
fearful of a Metaphor, that no Example of Virgil can encourage them to be bold with safety
(1697/1987, 351). Here again, Dryden proffers the names of Spenser and Milton as the
nearest in English to Virgil and Horace in the Latine for their use of diction (ibid., 326).
The articulation of an English poetic standard in terms of an established lineage of Virgilian
translation and imitation here gives added value to Drydens definition of translation a
definition again inherited from Denhams preface to the 1656 Destruction of Troy as an
attempt to make Virgil speak such English, as he woud himself have spoken, if he had
been born in England, and in his present Age (ibid., 331).
The Translator 55
While the narratives of progress outlined in Roscommons Essay and Drydens prefatory
statements are best understood as a response to the context of cultural competition,
especially with France,7 that marked the second half of the seventeenth century, these
English genealogies of translated verse should also be examined in terms of the selection
strategies through which they are constructed. The dynamics of inclusion and exclusion can
be quite explicit as exemplified by Drydens energetic rejection of Ogilbys Virgil, which
continued to be popular in the latter part of the seventeenth century. As early as the 1685
preface to the Sylvae translation miscellany, Dryden identifies Ogilby as a botching
Interpreter (Dryden 1685/1969, 4) a statement echoed at the end of the preface to the
Aeneid, where Dryden declares: What they calld his Picture, had been drawn at length, so
many times, by the Daubers of almost all Nations, and still so unlike him, that I snatchup
the Pencil with disdain (Dryden 1697/1987, 339). Despite these more or less explicit
statements, the disdain that Dryden showed towards Ogilby cannot have been motivated
purely by aesthetic reasons, as it has been shown that Dryden owed many rhymes, and even
lines, to him (Proudfoot 1960). More importantly, the 1697 volume, advertised as Drydens
Virgil, was produced by Drydens publisher Jacob Tonson in the same format, with the same
illustrations, and through the same system of subscription as Ogilby had previously
employed (Barnard 2000). It appears that, as a cultural product, the 1697 Virgil was
designed as a replacement to its popular predecessor which must have provided Dryden
an additional reason for wishing to differentiate his own work from Ogilbys.
Drydens attitude towards Denham and Waller is more ambiguous, perhaps, yet
equally revealing. As expected, Dryden acknowledges both translators, noting that tis
the utmost of my Ambition to be thought their Equal, or not to be much inferiour [sic] to
them (1697/1987, 325). However, he immediately underlines the fact that they produced
but partial renderings of the epic poem: But tis one thing to take pains on a Fragment,
and translate it perfectly; and another thing to have the weight of a whole Author on my
shoulders (ibid., 3256). As Davis (2004, 85) has noted, Drydens metaphor casts him as
a new Aeneas, carrying his father on his back an image perfectly suited to Drydens
double stance as inheritor of Denhams and Wallers perfections, and as direct competitor
to their reputation as founders of English Virgilian translation. Indeed, in an easily
recognisable overturn of the modesty topos, Dryden straightaway directs the reader to
the passages in which he has succeeded best (1697/1987, 325). Similarly, while see-
mingly re-enforcing Wallers and Denhams respective reputations for sweet-sounding
verses and strong diction (ibid., 321), he appropriates both qualities by declaring himself
the first Englishman, perhaps, who made it a design to copy [Virgil] in his Numbers, his
choice of Words, and his placing them for the sweetness of the sound (ibid., 319).
The manipulation of preceding versions clearly represents a distinctive feature of
Drydens self-promoting strategies;8 yet the genealogies of translation thus created do
not solely allow him to position his translating activities in relation to existing versions of
the same text. They also serve to neutralise the critical debates surrounding his fashioning
of an English neoclassical aesthetic. Most notable perhaps is Drydens almost complete
avoidance of one of the major disputes of the time, that of the suitability of the heroic
couplet as the English epic metre. The rhymed decasyllable, as perfected by Denham
and Waller, had been canonised in the 1650s and 1660s as the closest equivalent to the
Latin and Greek hexameter; yet the publication of Miltons Paradise Lost in 1667 had
posed a significant challenge to this established consensus, and many English critics
such as Roscommon, for example recognised in Miltons unrhymed pentameters the true
spirit of the British Muse (Roscommon 1684, 24). The only mention of blank verse in
Drydens preface to the Aeneid is made in passing, propos Caros Italian version of the
56 M.-A. Belle
poem, and is immediately dismissed as a digression (Dryden 1697/1987, 324). Yet one
cannot fail to recognise Drydens evocation of his Magna Charta of heroic poetry (ibid.,
331) as an indirect response to the underlying debate. Summoned to justify an apparently
minor issue the occasional use of triplet rhymes Drydens Ancestors (ibid.) also
represent a tradition of poets writing in rhymed couplets. By identifying these precedents
with a supposedly unanimous, and distinctly English Standard (ibid.), Dryden sidesteps
the whole debate, and ignores the alternative verse model provided by Miltons epic.
A similar process of suppression/assimilation of competing translation modes is at work in
Drydens discussion of heroic diction. As noted above, although Miltons name is conspicu-
ously absent from Drydens discussion of metre, he is mentioned as one of the best imitators of
Virgils figurative language. What Dryden is hinting at here is the aesthetic of the sublime
proposed by Milton in Paradise Lost an aesthetic of harsh contrasts and bold metaphors that
ran counter to the ideal of balance and decorum theorised in the 1650s, and illustrated, as we
have seen, by Wallers and Denhams translations. Dryden, who had himself often been
criticised for his daring imagery, had openly sided with Milton in his Apology for Heroic
Poetry and Poetic Licence (1677), defending Miltons poetics by referring to the authority of
Virgil and Horace: Virgil and Horace, the severest Writers of the severest age, have made
frequent use of the hardest Metaphors, and of the strongest Hyperboles: and in this case the
best Authority is the best Argument (Dryden 1677/1956, 90). The same argument is applied
here, and not only does Dryden enrol Milton as a fellow descendant of Virgil and Horace, but
he also makes boldness a distinctive feature of the English standard. Here again, Drydens
presentation of the English heroic model as a consensual taste for Strength and Elevation, as
opposed to a feeble, timorous French muse, tends to underplay the existence of discordant
voices within the English poetical milieux of the time.
There was indeed disagreement among contemporary translators of the Aeneid on
Drydens interpretation of the Virgilian sublime. The main example of a differing idea of
epic diction is offered in the translation of Virgils poem by the Earl of Lauderdale, which
was composed in the 1690s and widely circulated in manuscript before being published
posthumously in 1709. Interestingly enough, this is about the only translation that Dryden
openly admits to having consulted in the composition of his own version: having his
Manuscript in my hands, I consulted it as often as I doubted my Authors Sense. For no
Man understood Virgil better than that Learned Noble Man (1697/1987, 3367). The
preface to the 1709 edition of Lauderdales Aeneid however indicates that his approach
was quite different from Drydens (Lauderdale 1709, sig. [A3]v and [A4]r):
Our Translator has not taken the Liberty, or very rarely, to Paraphrase upon his Author, a Vice
too much in Use at this Day; but has endeavourd to give you his genuine Sense and Meaning
in as few Words, and as easie a turn of Language, as the Majesty of Virgils Style, and the
Interpretation of the Original, would permit.
As is well known, Dryden had been one of the main advocates of paraphrase, or
translation with latitude, as defined in his preface to the 1680 miscellany of Ovids
Epistles (Dryden 1680/1956, 114). More specifically, in the preface to his Aeneid transla-
tion, he had justified his many additions to the original by the very nature of Virgils
sublime style. Drydens expansive use of metaphors and hyperboles can be observed in
the passage from book IV depicting the monster, Fame (Dryden 1697/1987, 460):9
A monstrous Fantom, Horrible and vast

As many Plumes as raise her lofty flight,
The Translator 57
So many piercing Eyes inlarge her sight:

Millions of opening Mouths to Fame belong;
And evry Mouth is furnishd with a Tongue:
And round with listning Ears the flying Plague is hung.
She fills the peaceful Universe with Cries;
No Slumbers ever close her wakeful Eyes
By contrast, Lauderdales version keeps its promise of brevity, offering a rather more
sober rendering of the five original lines (Lauderdale 1709, 157):
The horrid Monsters studded oer with Eyes;

All Voice, all Tongue, with most attentive Ears,
By Night her self upon her Wings she bears,
Through middle Air: Sleep never shuts her Eyes...
Given the marked difference in styles, Drydens acknowledgement of his debt to

Lauderdale could seem surprising. Perhaps he was seeking to prevent accusations of
plagiarism, a hypothesis that is made more probable by the fact that he owed many lines
and turns of phrase to Lauderdale (Proudfoot 1960). However, Drydens praise of his
predecessors learning could also be read as a double-edged compliment, relegating
Lauderdales divergent interpretation of Virgils sublime to a mere crib, only valuable as
an aid to understanding the Authors Sense (Dryden 1697/1987, 336).
Drydens self-presentation not just as a new Virgil, but as the fulfilment of an
English tradition of Virgilian poets, fully illustrates the process of creating cultural
value often identified with the retranslation of Classics in the Augustan Age (Lefevere
1998; Venuti 2004). His recuperation of the names of Chapman, Denham and Waller in
his Magna Charta of English poetry (Dryden 1697/1987, 331), as opposed to the
French literary model or other native precedents, also highlights an important aspect of
literary retranslations: their close, if sometimes uneasy, relation to competing aesthetic
and linguistic norms within their target culture (Susam-Sarajeva 2003). Yet what is
particularly striking about Dryden and this is where Foucaults genealogical approach
is particularly useful is the way he weaves these divergent voices into a narrative of
national aesthetic, as well as linguistic and cultural consensus. The efficiency of
Drydens discursive strategies can be measured by the conventional identification of
his translating style as the epitome of the English Augustan aesthetic, and as the result
of a gradual integration of the metrical and stylistic innovations inherited from Denham
and Waller (Sowerby 2006). Even recent accounts of early modern translations of the
Aeneid tend to single out Drydens Virgil as a classic in its own right, more or less
ignoring its direct competitors. By conducting a Foucauldian genealogy of Drydens
own genealogical discourse, we are able to locate the origins of this traditional narrative
within the social, material, ideological and aesthetic tensions that marked late seven-
teenth-century Britain. Indeed, as revealed by the context of cultural and literary
competition in which this translation was produced, the canonisation of Drydens
translation as the standard of English neoclassical literature was already in the making
through Drydens own adroit appropriation of literary precedents and his creation of a
poetical lineage of English authors designed to validate his own interpretive and
aesthetic choices.
58 M.-A. Belle
3. At the interface of translation history and literary history: critical and

historiographical tools
While the primary object of this study was to qualify the existing narratives on the
fashioning of English neoclassical art of poetry through Virgilian translation, and thereby
to promote a heightened historiographical consciousness among scholars of literary
translation, it may prove useful here to lay out the various methodological components
of a genealogical approach to translations such as I have sought to conduct in this study.
The first element, of course, consists in giving full attention to the discursive strategies
deployed in the paratexts of translations, and in conducting a critical and historicised
analysis of recurring tropes and themes. The works of Hermans, Lefevere, Venuti and
others (see also Copeland 1997; St-Pierre 1993) have amply illustrated how translators
social, political or ideological stances can be established through examining the historical
and material conditions in which they worked. What should however be integrated into
these existing models of discursive analysis is the recent, and abundant, research on the
phenomenon of retranslation (see Monti, Schnyder, and Ladmiral 2011 for a full biblio-
graphy on the topic). In the present case, the main cause of historiographical distortion lies
in the fact that historians have failed to take into account the context of competition that
partly motivated the discourse on improvement and progress. Giving full attention to
the active (Pym 1998, 84) dimension of the consecutive renderings of a given text
allows one instead to gain a certain amount of critical perspective, and to document the
cumulative, interactive and dialogical relationship that becomes established between the
various renderings of the same text over a given period of time (St Andr 2003, Venuti
2004; Foz and Serrano 2005; Brownlie 2006). Combined with the examination of the
immediate conditions material, political, historical, but also social and even personal
(Pym 1998, 84) in which these retranslations were produced, a full awareness of the
dynamics of retranslation constitutes a major advantage for the scholar seeking to conduct
a historical analysis of translation discourse. Indeed, while recurring themes of translation
discourse are often approached as generic commonplaces or rhetorical tropes, examining
the underlying tensions can reveal the presence of much more active, and therefore
interesting, discursive phenomena, such as the strategic re-evaluation, recuperation, or
even redefinition of earlier statements and images as has been observed here, for
example, with Denhams new and nobler way.
As discursive shifts are more easily observable over a longer timespan, it is important
here to combine somewhat micro-historical readings with a wider perspective. Most
useful in this case is Lieven DHulsts suggestion to adapt the historiographical categories
developed by the Annales school of history to the study of translation (DHulst 1995), and
to distinguish between the longer term, for example the definition of translation as
linguistic and literary interpretation that marks European approaches to translation,
from Cicero to Tytler (Rener 1989); the middle term, in our case the early modern
and neoclassical context of translation and appropriation of ancient literature; and the
short term, where the specific responses of translators, or groups of translators, can be
observed and documented. Combining these three levels of analysis not only enables one
to situate translators within their immediate universe of discourse (Lefevere 1992), but
also allows one to perceive the way in which they construct their own relationship with
received discourses and practices as observable over the middle or long term. In particular,
the analysis of both micro- and macro-historical contexts is essential in order to identify
moments of crystallisation or transformation of translation tropes. As has been shown
here, the themes of improvement and progress become prominent at times of increased
The Translator 59
cultural and literary pressure, when the multiplication of parallel versions of the same
work testifies to major changes in the interpretive, aesthetic and cultural codes of transla-
tion. While these intensive periods of retranslation (Gambier 1994, 4156) offer privi-
leged insight into the discursive strategies and literary practices embraced by various
translators, they also constitute historiographical moments that are worth considering in
themselves. In our case, the crystallisation of the discourse on improvement in the
1650s, in a context of competing literary and aesthetic models, represents such a moment.
Another moment could be identified in the late 1680s and 1690s, with the appropriation
and systematisation of these genealogies of literature and translation as outlined by
Roscommon and Dryden it is worth noting that, almost a century later, Samuel
Johnson would equally apply the same discourse on the perfection of English literature
to the names of Denham, Waller and Dryden himself. One could even distinguish yet
another historiographical moment in the recent attempts by scholars such as Sowerby,
Martindale and Gillespie to reconstruct an English tradition of Classical translation, at a
time when, as Martindale candidly admits, the place of the Classics in the English literary
(and academic) system is being seriously challenged (Martindale 2004, 28).

The identification of such discursive and historiographical nodes bears important
implications in terms of periodisation.10 For example, it is obvious that Sowerbys introduc-
tion of the early Augustan as a critical and historiographical category, as opposed to the
mature or full Augustan mode exemplified by Drydens translations in the 1680s and
1690s (2006, 89ff), is a direct result of his teleological approach to literary history. Wallers
and Denhams productions in the 1650s and 1660s are read in terms of their later
characterisation as precursors to the Augustan poets a characterisation which, as we
have seen, was guided by the latters specific agenda, as well as the larger framework of
the English neoclassical literary discourse. Yet, as has been demonstrated here, the 1650s
and 1660s were marked by conflicting literary, cultural and aesthetic models, and these
decades of competing influences and overlapping norms cannot be so easily subsumed
under the category of the early Augustan. Taking into account the full array of translations
produced in a specific period and in particular the so-called minor works that literary
historians have traditionally tended to disregard is therefore an important step to correct
the potential distortions brought about by the selective analysis of a hierarchised corpus on
the basis of retrospectively established historiographical categories. By focusing instead on
moments of transformation, competing norms and historical discontinuities, the kind of
history that derives from the genealogical approach is shaped as a differential and dynamic
account which may in the end help bring to light the specific place of translations and
translators in the fashioning of literary histories.
In order to gain a full understanding of the discursive strategies employed by translators,
their involvement in literary debates and their relationship with the literary milieux of their
times, it is essential to explore the interface between the various modes of translation discourse
developing at a given time and contemporary writings on literary theory and criticism. In this
case, these two discursive modes are closely intertwined indeed, hardly distinguishable and
the fields of translation history and literary history are therefore engaged in what could be
called a reciprocal relation. As I hope to have illustrated here, the study of the literary context in
which translations were produced, and which they actually sought to address, both contributes
to and benefits from a specific analysis of translation discourses and practices. This dialogical
relationship between the disciplines of translation studies and literary history should, I believe,
be considered an essential condition for writing the kind of differential histories of literary
translation I have sought to outline above. The question of where the (literary) translation
historian should be located has often been raised that is, whether one should study (literary)
60 M.-A. Belle
history through the lens of translations or should examine the impact of a given historical
situation on translation practices and their theorisation (Rundle 2011; see also Foz 2006, 135
6). Rather than articulating the debate in exclusive, binary terms, I should like to suggest that
the interface represents the most fruitful, if not the sole inhabitable ground for the translation
historian, as the only place that allows for the perspective required to write a dynamic, fully
historicised account of the practice of translation over the medium or long term.
Notes
1. See in particular the work of Hermans, Lefevere and other scholars of the so-called
Manipulation School. Literary historians have also been quick to grasp the difficulties
involved in navigating between traditional narratives and the new, post-modern archive
(Perkins 1992) and have responded by interrogating the social and material conditions that
underlie the making of English literature (Grafton and Jardine 1986; Fowler 1991; Ross
1998; Kastan 2007), as well as the discursive strategies involved in the establishment of the
literary canon and its often self-fashioned figures (Helgerson 1983; Pask 1996). However, as
noted above, their insights have not yet been fully integrated into the study of literary
translations.
2. A similar example of the construction of linear narratives in translation history can be
observed in the case of the Elizabethan translator George Chapman, whom historians of
translation theory routinely depict as a precursor to Denham and Dryden mostly as a result
of the latters recuperation of Chapmans work to justify their own approaches to poetical
translation (Belle 2013, 74).
3. He had been exiled in 1643 for his role in the aptly named Waller Plot, designed to gain
London for the King, yet returned in 1653, and in 1655 wrote A Panegyric to my Lord
Protector in praise of Cromwell.
4. See Aeneid II, l. 203207: Ecce autem gemini a Tenedo tranquilla per alta/ horresco
referens immensis orbibus angues/incumbunt pelago, pariterque ad litora tendunt;/pectora
quorum inter fluctus arrecta iubaeque/sanguineae superant undas (and lo! from Tenedos,
over the peaceful depths I shudder as I speak a pair of serpents with endless coils are
breasting the sea and side by side making for the shore. Their bosoms rise amid the surge, and
their crests, blood-red, overtop the waves); translated by H. Fairclough (Virgil 1978). All
translations in the footnotes that follow are taken from this edition.
5. While wit and judgement represent generic categories of poetical discourse from the 1650s
onwards, note how Bromes comment on Waller as a standard bearer of these values echoes
the foreword to the 1658 translation.
6. In Virgils text, littora littoribus contraria, fluctibus undas,/imprecor, arma armis: pungent
ipsiaue nepotesque Aeneid IV, l. 628629 (May coast with coast conflict, I pray, and sea
with sea, arms with arms; war may they have, themselves and their childrens children).
7. Dryden also discusses Italian translations of Virgil in the preface to the 1697 Aeneid, noting
for example that Annibale Caros Aeneid is most scandalously mean, by which he means
literal (Dryden 1697/1987, 324).
8. One of Drydens sharpest critics, Luke Milbourne, was to denounce these strategies in his
Notes on Drydens Virgil (1698), where he ironically glossed Drydens mention of Cowley and
Waller as follows: Thus the poor Frog would swell himself into an Ox; had any of them,
especially Mr. Cowley, undertaken this work, we had had Virgils sence [sic] and air running
thro the whole, and the Work would have been known by every Reader, without the
Advertisement of the Running Title (Milbourne 1698, 2829).
9. Compare with Virgil, Aeneid IV, l. 180185: monstrum horrendum, ingens, cui, quot sunt
corpore plumae/tot uigiles oculi subter, mirabile dictu,/tot linguae, totidem ora sonant, tot
subrigit aures./Nocte uolat caeli medio terraeque per umbram,/stridens, nec dulci declinat
lumina somno (a monster awful and huge, who for the many feathers in her body has as many
watchful eyes beneath wondrous to tell as many tongues, as many sounding mouths, as
many pricked-up ears. By night, midway between heaven and earth, she flies through the
gloom, screeching, and droops not her eyes in sweet sleep).
The Translator 61
10. Clara Foz (2006, 13642) raises similar issues about teleological forms of periodisation,
criticising in particular the silencing of historiographical gaps and tensions within precon-
structed temporal classifications.
Notes on contributor
Marie-Alice Belle is Assistant Professor in Translation Studies at the Universit de Montral. Her
research focuses on early modern English translations of Classical authors, early modern translation
theory and discourse, and the role of translations in the development of early modern English print
culture.
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At The Interface Between Translation History and Literary History

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At the interface between translation

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At the interface between translation history and literary history:

Dpartement de Linguistique et Traduction, Universit de Montral,

As clearly demonstrated by the impending completion of the prestigious, five-volume

2014 Taylor & Francis

controversial attitudes to property and community permeated their translation practices, as

frontispiece illustration of the 1658 Passion of Dido, an engraving by Franz Cleyn

When two huge Serpents through the quiet Flood

When two prodigious Serpents were descride,

Similarly, the evocation of Didos death in book IV demonstrates Wallers skill in

2. Roscommon, Dryden and the genealogies of English Neoclassicism

The identification of seventeenth-century poets with Classical authors, in particular

From thence [France] our genrous Emulation came,

A monstrous Fantom, Horrible and vast

So many piercing Eyes inlarge her sight:

The horrid Monsters studded oer with Eyes;

Given the marked difference in styles, Drydens acknowledgement of his debt to

3. At the interface of translation history and literary history: critical and

(and academic) system is being seriously challenged (Martindale 2004, 28).

Boileau, N. 1966. uvres Compltes. edited by Franoise Escal. Paris: Gallimard.

A. Lefevere, 4156. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.

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