Virgil's English Translators - (Edinburgh Critical Studies in Literary Translation) by Ian Calvert (Hardcover)

About the Book

Analyses the translations of the Eclogues, Georgics and the Aeneid to reflect the cultural influence of Virgil over the decades of the seventeenth century.

Book Synopsis

This book considers the writers who translated Virgil into English during the English civil wars, the Interregnum and the early years of the Stuart Restoration (c. 1636-c. 1661). It argues that these writers translated Virgil in order to display and interrogate their political loyalties, articulate personal responses to past traumas and express their hopes for the country's future. All of Virgil's English translators in this period were in some way associated with the royalist cause, but the political elements of their respective translations demonstrate that royalism itself was not a monolithic political standpoint and instead encompassed a wide variety of opinions regarding the policy of individual monarchs and the institution of monarchy.

From the Back Cover

Analyses the translations of the Eclogues, Georgics and the Aeneid to reflect the cultural influence of Virgil over the decades of the seventeenth century This book considers the writers who translated Virgil into English during the English civil wars, the Interregnum and the early years of the Stuart Restoration (c. 1636-c. 1661). It argues that these writers translated Virgil in order to display and interrogate their political loyalties, articulate personal responses to past traumas and express their hopes for the country's future. All of Virgil's English translators in this period were in some way associated with the royalist cause, but the political elements of their respective translations demonstrate that royalism itself was not a monolithic political standpoint and instead encompassed a wide variety of opinions regarding the policy of individual monarchs and the institution of monarchy. Ian Calvert is Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Bristol.

About the Author

Ian Calvert is Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Bristol. He has published a number of articles, including 'Augustan Allusion: Quotation and Self-Quotation in Pope's Odyssey', Review of English Studies (advance online access), 'Hindsight as Foresight: Virgilian Retrospective Prophecy in Coopers Hill and The Destruction of Troy', International Journal of the Classical Tradition, 26 (2019), 150-74, 'Slanted Histories, Hesperian Fables: Material Form and Royalist Prophecy in John Ogilby's The Works of Publius Virgilius Maro', The Seventeenth Century, 33.5 (2018), 531-55 and 'Trojan Pretenders: Dryden's "The Last Parting of Hector and Andromache", Jacobitism, and Translatio Imperii', Translation and Literature, 26.1 (2017), 1-22.