English Translation and Classical Reception is the first genuine cross-disciplinary study bringing English literary history to bear on questions about the reception of classical literary texts, and vice versa. The text draws on the author's exhaustive knowledge of the subject from the early Renaissance to the present.
- The first book-length study of English translation as a topic in classical reception
- Draws on the author's exhaustive knowledge of English literary translation from the early Renaissance to the present
- Argues for a remapping of English literary history which would take proper account of the currently neglected history of classical translation, from Chaucer to the present
- Offers a widely ranging chronological analysis of English translation from ancient literatures
- Previously little-known, unknown, and sometimes suppressed translated texts are recovered from manuscripts and explored in terms of their implications for English literary history and for the interpretation of classical literature
CLASSICAL RECEPTION
ENGLISH TRANSLATION AND CLASSICAL RECEPTION
TOWARDS A NEW LITERARY HISTORY
This first book-length study of English translation as a topic in classical reception engages with the dialogues generated between individual translations and their source-texts, but also with the wide and deep tradition to which they belong. Mixing survey chapters with case studies, English Translation and Classical Reception threads its way from Shakespeare to the late twentieth century.
As lead editor of the first history of English literary translation, Gillespie has been a major force in recovering the remarkable and extensive history of translators' engagements with the classics over the centuries. This book focuses on the implications both for English literary history and for classical scholarship. But Gillespie then goes on to dig down to a new level of historical rediscovery in his analysis of a range of forgotten, unpublished, and suppressed classical translations by writers across the centuries. This important text will mark a change in the way in which the English reception of classical literature is viewed and studied.
