The Culture of Translation in Early Modern England and France, 1500-1660

This collection explores the varied modalities and cultural interventions of translation in early modern England and France. Paying attention to the shared parameters of these two translation cultures, it argues for their interaction as an important and untold story. The essays touch on key figures in this story - Mary Sidney, Montaigne and Florio, Urquhart and Rabelais - but also probe the role of translation in the large cultural shifts experienced in parallel by the two countries. Topics explored include: the galvanizing impact of Greek and Hebrew on the two translation cultures; translation's guises in the humanist practice of France and England; translation as definition of national difference; as a broker of state diplomacy; as a tool for sceptical philosophy; and as a means of imagining a linguistic utopia. The essays' scope ranges from methodological reflections toward a cultural history of early modern translation, to the adventures of a sceptical adverb between France and England.

Tania Demetriou is Lecturer in Early Modern Literature at the University of York, UK. She works on the reception of classical texts in the early modern period, and especially on literary responses to Homer in the English Renaissance. She has published on Spenser, Chapman, and on early modern attitudes to the Homeric Question.

Rowan Tomlinson is Lecturer in French (Renaissance Studies) at the University of Bristol, UK. She works on the cultural, literary, and intellectual history of Renaissance France, and has published on Rabelais, Montaigne, and on the transmission and reception of Pliny the Elder in both literary and non-literary writing.

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements
Notes on the Contributors
'Abroad in mens hands': The Culture of Translation in Early Modern England and France; Tania Demetriou and Rowan Tomlinson
1. From Cultural Translation to Cultures of Translation? Early Modern Readers, Sellers, and Patrons; Warren Boutcher
2. Francis I's Royal Readers: Translation and the Triangulation of Power in early Renaissance France (1533-34); Glyn P. Norton
3. Pure and Common Greek in Early Tudor England; Neil Rhodes
4. From Commentary to Translation: Figurative Representations of the Text in the French Renaissance; Paul White
5. Periphron Penelope and her Early Modern Translations; Tania Demetriou
6. Richard Stanihurst's Aeneis and the English of Ireland; Patricia Palmer
7. Women's Weapons: Country House Diplomacy in the Countess of Pembroke's French Translations; Edward Wilson-Lee
8. 'Peradventure' in Florio's Montaigne; Kirsti Sellevold
9. Translating Scepticism and Transferring Knowledge in Montaigne's House; John O'Brien
10. Urquhart's Inflationary Universe; Anne Lake Prescott
Epilogue; Terence Cave
Bibliography
Index