Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editors’ Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on the Text
- Introduction
- 1 The Search for a Lofty British Virgil: The Early Elizabethan Aeneids of Thomas Phaer, Thomas Twyne and Richard Stanyhurst
- 2 ‘Sound this Angry Message in Thine Eares’: Sympathy and the Translations of the Aeneid in Marlowe's Dido Queene of Carthage
- 3 Courteous Virgil: The Manuscript Translations of an Anonymous Poet, Sir John Harington and Sir William Mure of Rowallan
- 4 Virginian Virgil: The Single-Book Translations of Sir Thomas Wroth, Sir Dudley Digges and George Sandys
- 5 Rome at War: The Military Virgils of John Vicars, Robert Stapylton and Robert Heath
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Courteous Virgil: The Manuscript Translations of an Anonymous Poet, Sir John Harington and Sir William Mure of Rowallan
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 September 2017
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series Editors’ Preface
- Acknowledgements
- Notes on the Text
- Introduction
- 1 The Search for a Lofty British Virgil: The Early Elizabethan Aeneids of Thomas Phaer, Thomas Twyne and Richard Stanyhurst
- 2 ‘Sound this Angry Message in Thine Eares’: Sympathy and the Translations of the Aeneid in Marlowe's Dido Queene of Carthage
- 3 Courteous Virgil: The Manuscript Translations of an Anonymous Poet, Sir John Harington and Sir William Mure of Rowallan
- 4 Virginian Virgil: The Single-Book Translations of Sir Thomas Wroth, Sir Dudley Digges and George Sandys
- 5 Rome at War: The Military Virgils of John Vicars, Robert Stapylton and Robert Heath
- Conclusion
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
In recent years, manuscript translations have been gaining greater attention. They reveal a different side of reception history than is apparent in printed texts. As Henry Woudhuysen has demonstrated, early modern England was not only a print culture, ‘it was also a manuscript culture’. There were many reasons a text might be copied and circulated exclusively by hand: the subject-matter might be overtly seditious or delicately private. In 2011, the first exploration of a range of English manuscript translations appeared in Stuart Gillespie's book, English Translation and Classical Reception. In the history of English Renaissance translations of the Aeneid, manuscript circulation plays a crucial role. The translation by Gavin Douglas, for example, had an extensive life in manuscript before it was printed posthumously in 1553, as is attested by the five surviving manuscripts. The translation by Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey and Sir John Denham's rendition of Books 2–6 of the Aeneid likewise existed in manuscript long before entering print. Yet whereas these translations were eventually printed, several substantial English translations never entered print in any form during the Renaissance. These include the anonymous translation discovered at Castle Ashby in 1977 (now BL Add. MS 60283), the version of Book 6 Harington presented to King James and Prince Henry in 1604 and Sir William Mure's rendition of Books 1 and 4 in the Edinburgh University Library. These translations naturally invite a consideration of the distinctive potentialities in manuscript translations of the Aeneid. In the case of these three texts, we will see that two of them have more light-hearted reasons for their existence in manuscript, but a high degree of exclusivity is a vital part of all of them. Moreover, they all treat Virgil's epic with a freedom that is rare in printed translations. Indeed, all three translators would have fallen under Humphrey's censure for their lack of faith to Virgil's Latin and for their often mischievous ethics. In the first section of this chapter, I will offer the first reading of the anonymous translation of Book 4 from the British Library, establishing for it a place within the history of Virgil translations and shedding more light on the author. In the second section, I will focus on how the Augustinian reading of Virgil in the commentary Harington attached to his translation would have influenced the young prince's reading of Book 6.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The English AeneidTranslations of Virgil 1555-1646, pp. 78 - 115Publisher: Edinburgh University PressPrint publication year: 2015