Artikel,
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, (September 2014)
DOI: 10.1080/13556509.2014.899093
Zusammenfassung
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.
