Translation, history and print: A model for the study of printed translations in early modern Britain

ABSTRACT

While translations have long been known to have played an important role in the development of the early modern English book market, their place in the emerging English culture of print has not been fully acknowledged by book historians. This historiographical gap can partly be explained by the lack of a theoretical framework for studying the market for translations in the period. Drawing on Robert Darnton’s “communication circuit” and its adaptations by various book and translation historians, we have created a model for studying printed translations in early modern England (1473–1660). Centred on translators as key historical and cultural agents, it will facilitate a critically and historically accurate investigation of translations as material and cultural objects, while highlighting the specific contribution of translators to the social, political and cultural networks that shaped the early modern English culture of print.

KEYWORDS:

• Translation
• print culture
• book history
• early modern England
• communications circuit
• model

Notes on contributors

Marie-Alice Belle is the Principal Investigator on the SSHRC-funded project, “Translation and the Making of Early Modern English Print Culture (1473–1660)”. Her recent research focuses on the material history of early modern British translations of the Classics (Virgil and Horace in particular), on early modern translation theory and discourse, and on the methodology of translation history.

Brenda M. Hosington, Co-Investigator on the “Translation and the Making of Early Modern English Print Culture (1473–1660)” project, has published widely on medieval and Renaissance translation, is the editor-in-chief of the Renaissance Cultural Crossroads Online Catalogue in Britain 1473–1640, and has edited a special issue of Renaissance Studies on translation and print in early modern Europe. She also writes on early modern women translators and on various Neo-Latin subjects.

Additional information

Funding

We should like to thank the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada/Conseil de Recherches en Sciences humaines for a three-year Insight Grant (grant number 435-2013-1603) for our project entitled ‘Translation and the Making of Early Modern Print Culture (1473–1660)’. The present article represents one result of that funded research.