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ABSTRACT
This article proposes a re-evaluation of the phenomenon of collaboration in European cultural history. First, it identifies the existence of a tradition of literary and translational collaboration across seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe which has been only hinted at in the literature to date and demonstrates that collaboration took a particularly distinctive form in the German-speaking states. Second, the article reveals a hidden tradition of women who worked together with male colleagues as intellectual equals and published translations which contributed to the national agenda of cultural regeneration. The article argues that collaboration should be understood as a valid and creative form of authorship, as it was at the time, thus pointing to new ways of interpreting the history of literature and translation. It also suggests that we should rethink women’s involvement in collaborative (male–female) partnerships and read these relationships as positive and productive, thus offering new ways of interpreting women’s history.
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the following Birmingham colleagues who read an earlier draft of this article: Dr Elystan Griffiths, Dr Angela Kershaw, Professor John Klapper and Dr Gaby Saldanha. I would also like to thank the reviewers at the journal for their helpful comments and suggestions.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Note on contributor
Hilary Brown is lecturer in translation studies at the University of Birmingham. She has published widely on the cultural history of translation in Germany. Much of her research has focused on the role of female translators; for example, her monograph Luise Gottsched the Translator (Camden House, 2012). She is currently working on female translators in the early modern period.
Notes
1. O’Brien (Citation2011, 17). As a new area of research, further definitions or typologies do not yet exist (and given the variations in collaborative practices may not be particularly helpful). Cf. Hersant (Citation2016).
2. On Pope, see Sowerby (Citation2005, 162–164); see also Hopkins and Rogers (Citation2005, 91–94).
3. There is little research explicitly on literary collaboration in early modern Germany. Bodo Plachta’s volume Literarische Zusammenarbeit, which aims to provide an overview of the phenomenon – Plachta tells us that he has tried to include essays on all the “important” periods in German literary history (Citation2001, viii) – jumps from the Middle Ages to the eighteenth century. Collaboration is not thematized in standard reference works (see e.g. Lohmeier Citation1999).
4. It is accepted that the seventeenth century was the “heyday” of the poetae docti in Germany (Barner Citation1981, 728) but there appears to be little literature on the topic. I have found the following helpful for this section: Barner (Citation1981); Niefanger (Citation2000, 63–66); Laufhütte (Citation2007).
5. One seventeenth-century author who was particularly active as an editor and co- or ghostwriter for the nobility was Sigmund von Birken. Birken was never mentioned by name on the publications as having been involved in this manner, and his case demonstrates how literature functioned as a commodity: Birken’s services were commissioned and paid for, and the work he supplied became the property of the client (Laufhütte Citation2007).
6. See Conermann (Citation1997) for other examples of translation projects with which Ludwig was involved as co-translator or editor. Collaboration remained an important feature of the German language societies. For example, in the Pegnesische Blumenorden it was the policy that all works published by members under their society names should first be read – and if necessary edited – by the current president (Jürgensen Citation2006, 532).
7. Perhaps unsurprisingly, standard accounts have tended to disregard literary collaborations involving women or treat them with suspicion. For instance, Sibylle Ursula von Braunschweig-Lüneburg and Maria Katharina Stockfleth are described as female novelists whose work “became swallowed up in that of their male collaborator” (Watanabe O’Kelly Citation2000, 42). But increasingly evidence is emerging which suggests that collaboration with other men and women was a common modus operandi (see e.g. Spahr Citation1966; Laufhütte, Jöns, and Schuster Citation2005, xxii–xxv).
8. Bouwinghausen to Andreae, 2 November 1651, MS Cod. Guelf. 236.13 Extrav., 208, Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel (hereafter cited as MS Cod. Guelf). A letter from Bouwinghausen to Andreae in March 1650 is revealing regarding the nature of the collaboration. Bouwinghausen asks Andreae to check her German but more importantly to check for contentious Calvinist content and to indicate with a small asterisk anything she should change (German Lutherans had considered England to be firmly Calvinist since the Elizabethan Settlement in the previous century, suspecting English devotional writing to contain “hidden poison”, and Lutheran translations were sometimes published in “cleansed” editions – see Sträter [Citation1987, 38–57]). See MS Cod. Guelf., 205r–206v. I am grateful to Dr Esther Bauer for her assistance in providing transcripts of the letters from Bouwinghausen to Andreae held in Wolfenbüttel.
9. See, for example, letter of 19 July 1652, MS Cod. Guelf., 213r and 214v. For collaboration with others – particularly Birken – on her Charron translation, see Koloch and Mulsow (Citation2006).
10. The German reads as follows: a number of keywords are printed in a slightly bigger font (italicized here), which draws specific attention to Anhalt-Köthen’s society name “die Emsige”, Barby und Mühlingen’s “der Dienliche” and Ludwig’s “der Nährende”: “Desto mehr ist zu rühmen die gotselige andacht einer vornehmen Weibesperson/welche dieses geistreiche Büchlein zu verdeütschen und ans Liecht zubringen/vor jahren die hände mit angeleget/und mit Ihrem Embsigen fleis sich dahin bearbeitet/das auch in unserer Muttersprache vielen Christglaubigen gemütern damit gedienet/ und sie durch dergleichen geistreiche erquickung möchten erbauet/genehret und erhalten werden” Anhalt-Köthen (Citation1641, 12; italics added). See also Conermann (Citation1997, 435–437).
11. See letter of 30 July 1651, MS Cod. Guelf., 207v; and letter of 14 December 1652, MS Cod. Guelf., 227v.
12. As the Society had no physical home and contact between members was mostly via letter, it has been argued that membership was primarily symbolic: “Essentially if you have a situation where just one, two or three people are undertaking activities in the spirit of the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft then this is the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, an expression of the will of the German-loving society” (Manger Citation2001, 88; emphasis in original). A further example is the group translation of the medieval Italian novella collection Cento novelle antiche (also known as Il Novellino) undertaken by members of Ludwig’s family, probably at his court, in the early 1620s: seven women who were core members of the Académie des Loyales and Tugendliche Gesellschaft plus Ludwig’s son Prince Ludwig the Younger and an editor who was probably Ludwig himself (Seelbach Citation1985, esp. 1–20).
13. Letter of June 1652. MS Cod. Guelf., 211v.
14. Ibid., 212r.
15. For example, Andreae worked for many years in a salaried position as collaborator/proofreader for Duke August von Braunschweig-Lüneburg – see Brecht (Citation2002).
16. The first translation by Christoph Köler was done from the Latin (1632), Bouwinghausen used a French edition, and the third translation by Henning Koch (1667) may have been done from the original English. See also Sträter Citation2003.
17. A comparison of Zeidler’s translation and Johann Leonhard Martini’s translation of the same year shows that the latter is punctured much more frequently by Latin and French borrowings (Zeidler Citation1700, 201–517; Martini Citation1700; see also Moore Citation2000, xxiv).
18. See Zeidler (Citation1700, n.p., Vorrede). Thomasius’ comments were responded to in part by Johann Casper Eberti who mentioned the translation (and quoted Thomasius) in his Eröffnetes Cabinet des gelehrten Frauen-Zimmers (Eberti Citation1706, 380–81). (Eberti attributed the translation to Zeidler’s sister Susanna, however.) On Bouwinghausen, see e.g. Bircher (Citation1968, 96–97, 208–11); Laufhütte and Schuster (Citation2007, xxxvi).