60 research outputs found
Challenging the author: Gavin Douglas's Eneados
No full textGavin Douglas’s Eneados, a translation into the “Scottis” tongue of Virgil’s Aeneid, completed in 1513 and first published in London in 1553, presents, as well as the translation of the additional thirteenth book by Maphaeus Vegius, original prologues and marginal notes to the text, rubrics and articulate conclusive material. The present paper analyses this complex paratext as evidence of Douglas’s almost philological attention to the original and his preoccupation with a faithful reproduction; it is also suggested that the models for his organization of the commentary might be both medieval (i.e., manuscripts such as Petrarch’s Virgilius Ambrosianus) and early modern, as in the case of editions of classical works: the most apt example being Jodocus Badius Ascensius’ edition of the Aeneid, printed in 1501. The Eneados thus stands on the threshold between manuscript and print, and might have indicated new possibilities of use of the printing medium in Scotland, and of the value of the translation of a classical text, had history not intervened with the Scottish defeat at Flodden Fields in 1513, which put a temporary stop both to the circulation of the Eneados and to the development of Scottish printing
Medieval Harps and Their Kingly Players
No full textThis article explores the appearance of the harp and the relation between this instrument and its player, generally a king or an Orpheus-like figure, in medieval English and Scottish literature, from Beowulf to fifteenth-century Scottish poets such as Robert Henryson or the author of the Liber Pluscardensis. Reference is made to the symbology of the harp in early Christian theology, as well as to its role in medieval theories of politics and good government
Walter Scott of Buccleuch, Italian Poet?
No full textThis article examines a small corpus of Italian poems appearing in the manuscript collection known as Hawthornden Manuscripts (National Library of Scotland) and identifies the hand as belonging to Walter Scott of Buccleuch, friend and protector of William Fowler, who is the author of a substantial group of writings in the same mss
Damnatio Memoriae and Surreptitious Printing: Niccolò Machiavelli in the British Isles
No full textIn this chapter the author discusses the role of censorship in the publication and dissemination of literary texts in early modern Europe, foscussing on the case study of the circulation of Niccolò Machiavelli's Principe in the British Isle
The Kingis Quair of James I of Scotland
No full textThis is the first, and so far only, full-length study of The Kingis Quair, a Scottish dream-poem written in the first half of the fifteenth century and attributed to James I, King of Scotland. The book analyses the poem offering a state-of-the-art survey of all existing bibliography on the subject, and then centering on a number of themes: the life and times of James I of Sotland, its supposed author and its protagonist; an analysis of the stylistic features of the poem, undertaken thanks to a statistical examination of tokens and types; a discussion of some of the most important philosophical sources of the Kingis Quair; and a final discussion of the role of literary tradition and autobiography in this work
Italian influences at the court of James VI: the case of William Fowler
No full textIn this essay the author analyses the role of William Fowler, intellectual, translator, poet and spy, at the court of James VI of Scotland. In the early years of his reign, the King called at his court a literary coterie of Scottish and English writers, encouraging not only original and occasional compositions, but also literary translation. The essay shows that, while the King and most of his poetic followers showed a predilection for the translation of contemporary French works, Fowler turned his attention to Italian classic and contemporary works, translating Petrarch's Trionfi, Machiavelli's Prince, but also a number of minor works such as Giordano Bruno's sonnets or the Lamenti of musical tradition. The essay therefore re-locates Fowler's position in the Scottish early modern literary revival, and his role in Scoto-Italian cultural relations
Translations Facing Inwards: James VI/I’s Basilikon Doron
No full textFirst published in 1599, and thereafter subjected to very careful revision on the part of its author, and destined to become the protagonist of a most adventurous editorial history, the Basilikon Doron has always presented a serious puzzle to editors and textual critics. James VI of Scotland, a king with no little experience of writing, attempted with this treatise the impossible task of exerting total control on his published work, and this, coupled with the extraordinary political circumstances surrounding the appearance of this text, triggered its fascinating textual history. This results in a text with many variants and translations, and the first is the work of its author, who transposes the original, heavily Scottish text into a wholly Anglicized version, ready for a publication that would be associated with the new King of England. The text immediately became the subject of discussion in Europe, and unauthorised new editions and translations began to appear, much to James’s annoyance.
The present chapter analyses two translations that are deeply embedded in James’s own preoccupation with the circulation of his political work: one is the King’s own transposition of the text from Middle Scots to English; the other is the Italian translation undertaken by John Florio, and surviving in manuscript. Obsessively faithful to the 1603 printed version, Florio’s translation does not look outward, at a possible Italian readership of the treatise; it rather attempts to reflect further glory on James’s text, closely imitating all its characteristics and explicitly proposing itself as a homage to a king that subsumes in himself all political thought: the centre towards which all advice writing converges, and from which it will spring again in different idioms
Contaminare lo spazio dell'innocenza: Machiavelli e gli elisabettiani
No full textIn the essay the role of Machiavelli in Elizabethan and Jacobean drama is analysed. The author draws a distinction between the actual readings in early modern England of the works of Machiavelli, and the appearance on stage of the "Machiavel", the early modern equivalent of the medieval Vice
“‘A Treatise of several forms of Government’: A Sixteenth-Century English Translation of The Prince
No full textIn his 1944 edition of a late-sixteenth-century English manuscript translation of Machiavelli’s Prince (now Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Eng. 1014), Hardin Craig mentioned, almost in passing, another manuscript that has hitherto received little or no attention: it is Oxford, Queen’s College, MS 251, and, among the extant early modern English versions of the Prince (four different versions appeared in manuscript before the publication of Edward Dacres’ translation in 1640), it is both the most mysterious and the most satisfying from a literary point of view. Donated to Queen’s College in the late seventeenth century, it has remained hidden for centuries among the theological treatises and collections of sermons which formed the bulk of the donation, and successive catalogues of the Library, possibly misled by the absence of a frontispiece, have referred to it simply as ‘A Treatise of several forms of Government’.
MS 251 is a small, neat and compact manuscript, containing solely the translation of Machiavelli’s work, without the name of the author or Machiavelli’s dedicatory letter to Lorenzo de’ Medici, but including, after the translation, a tentative index of names and concepts that suggests the text was meant to be searched for specific information or for the value of individual, gnomic sentences. The codex has no pretence at beauty or richness, but it is extremely clear and readable, showing how the scribe paid particular attention to the presence of historical or Biblical names, or to historical allusions in the text. Besides, it is evident that the translator has consciously attempted to imitate Machiavelli’s own elegant swiftness, as is evident in passages such as the opening lines of chapter 18: ‘How Lawdable yt is, a Prince to howld his faithe; and liue Justly: and not to vse disaight: eche man can conseaue.’
This translation has now been edited and briefly discussed in my Machiavelli in the British Isles (2009): drawing on this earlier work, in the present paper I would suggest some hypotheses on the manuscript’s provenance, reconstructing the available external evidence and analysing a number of features of the codex – from the watermark, to the binding, to the nature and the relation of the two hands appearing in the Machiavelli translation. At the same time, I would like to discuss the translation itself, comparing it with three contemporary translations (two English, one Scottish) and proposing an identification of the edition used by the translator. Besides, by analysing this translation, I will formulate a number of hypotheses on its use and intended audience, proposing a comparison between translations of the Prince intended solely as exercise for language learning (as in the case of William Fowler’s Scottish version), translations meant as collections of dicta (as in the Latin abridgement extant in British Library, Harley MS 966), and translations relying on the readers’ awareness of the spreading and sometimes misleading fame of Niccolò Machiavelli in the British Isles
'Polished and filed according to the right sence of the author': domesticating Leonardo Fioravanti’s Il reggimento della peste in Elizabethan England
No full textIn the Summer of 1579, while England was facing an umpteenth attack of the plague, London printer John Allde enriched his catalogue of publications for sale with a new title: A Joyfull Jewell. Contayning aswell such excellent orders, preseruatiues and precious practises for the plague. The text was the English translation of Del reggimento della peste, a short treatise published in 1565 by the renowned Bologna physician Leonardo Fioravanti (1517-post 1583). This essay is devoted to the translating history of this work beyond the Channel: by emphasising corrections, retouchings and omissions, the contribution aims at pointing out the ways in which the translator Thomas Hill adapted Fioravanti’s work to a different cultural and pedagogic context. In particular, the article intends to highlight the ways in which Fioravanti’s taste for the marvellous, which is an important part of his narrative talent, is systematically omitted by the translator. Hill eliminates the paratexts (in which Fioravanti discussed, also through interlocutions with the physicians of his time, the difficult triangulation between medicine, mirabilia and preternatural events: early modern Europe was accustomed to include divine wrath among the causes of plague); but then he also omits a large number of chapters not directly related to the central theme (“secreti di natura”, “ragionamenti sopra i pianeti”) that the Bolognese physician had inserted “per dilettatione di molti”. The final purpose of this contribution is therefore to analyse the omission and manipulation strategies underlying the ‘migration’ of the medical text, to show, even in a territory other than a purely narrative one, the anaesthesia of the mirabile. The translational operation that transformed the Regiment into the Jewel produced a meagre and, in some ways, impoverished recipe book of remedia, in which the equilibrium sought by Fioravanti between the delightful and the useful was decidedly unbalanced in favour of the latter
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