Tudor Translation in Theory and Practice

Book excerpt: Filling a gap in the study of early modern literature, Massimiliano Morini here exhaustively examines the aims, strategies, practice and theoretical ideas of the sixteenth-century translator. Morini analyzes early modern English translations of works by French and Italian essayists and poets, including Montaigne, Castiglione, Ariosto and Tasso, and of works by classical writers such as Virgil and Petrarch. In the process, he demonstrates how connected translation is with other cultural and literary issues: women as writers, literary relations between Italy and England, the nature of the author, and changes in the English language. Since English Tudor writers, unlike their Italian contemporaries, did not write theoretical treatises, the author works empirically to extrapolate the theory that informs the practice of Tudor translation - he deduces several cogent theoretical principles from the metaphors and figures of speech used by translators to describe translation