English Translation and Classical Reception (eBook)

THE AUTHOR STUART GILLESPIE is Reader in English Literature at the University of Glasgow, Scotland. His recent publications include Shakespeare's Books: A Dictionary of Shakespeare Sources (2001), Shakespeare and Elizabethan Popular Culture, edited with Neil Rhodes (2006), and The Cambridge Companion to Lucretius, edited with Philip Hardie (2007). He edits the journal Translation and Literature and is co-editor of the Oxford History of Literary Translation in English.

Preface vi

Acknowledgements viii

Note on Texts x

1. Making the Classics Belong: A Historical Introduction 1

2. Creative Translation 20

3. English Renaissance Poets and the Translating Tradition 33

4. Two-Way Reception: Shakespeare's Influence on Plutarch 47

5 Transformative Translation: Dryden's Horatian Ode 60

6. Statius and the Aesthetics of Eighteenth-Century Poetry 76

7. Classical Translation and the Formation of the English Literary Canon 93

8. Evidence for an Alternative History: Manuscript Translations of the Long Eighteenth Century 104

9. Receiving Wordsworth, Receiving Juvenal: Wordsworth's Suppressed Eighth Satire 123

10. The Persistence of Translations: Lucretius in the Nineteenth Century 150

11. 'Oddity and struggling dumbness': Ted Hughes's Homer 163

12. Afterword 180

References 183

Index of Ancient Authors and Passages 200

General Index 203

"Stuart Gillespie's English Translation and
Classical Reception is a beneficiary of this ferment, supplemented
by the author's comprehensive knowledge of translation
history, translation theory, and the growing bibliography in his
field." (Modern Philology, 1 August 2014)

"Overall, this volume will be a key resource for the study of
creative translation of classical texts in English, and thoroughly
succeeds in emphasising its importance in the history of English
literature. Its author's unmatched grasp of the range of the source
material is a great benefit...." (Bmcreview, 8 February 2012)

"Taken together, the various case studies of the book
express an energetic engagement with the rich inheritance of
classical literature and its complex role in and through English
translation." (CJ-Online, 5 September 2012)







"This bold book is a welcome challenge to sacred tenets of
English literary history. Gillespie brilliantly and rigorously
forces us to face the inconvenient truth of the role of classical
translation in English literature."

Susanna Braund, University of British Columbia

"We have long needed this meta-history explaining the canon
of literary translations and its strategic omissions.
Gillespie's magisterial survey gives the pleasure of a
conspective view clearly expressed."

Alastair Fowler, University of Edinburgh

"An inspiring and astringent polemic on behalf of
translation, the creative carriage into English of Homer, Virgil,
Lucretius and others, and its vitalizing effect on literary
tradition."

Adrian Poole, University of Cambridge

"These carefully crafted studies by a leading expert in
translation studies collectively make an overwhelming case for the
centrality of literary translation in the history both of English
literature and of the reception of classical
antiquity."

Philip Hardie, Trinity College, Cambridge

"A brilliant guide to the major issues that drive translation
studies, equally illuminating on both lost or neglected works and
on some of the most familiar masterpieces, ancient and
modern."

Joseph Farrell, University of Pennsylvania