Articles and Book Chapters by Brenda M Hosington
'Dulces ante omnia Musae': Essays on Neo-Latin Poetry in Honour of Dirk Sacré, 2021
Elizabeth Jane Weston, an Englishwoman living in Prague from roughly 1588 until her death in 1612... more Elizabeth Jane Weston, an Englishwoman living in Prague from roughly 1588 until her death in 1612, was known throughout the Neo-Latin republic of letters as a precocious English poet of great talent who corresponded with, wrote poems to, and received tributes from some of the major poets and humanists of her day. Her poems were first collected and published in 1602 under the title 'Poëmata Elisab. Ioan. Westoniae, Anglae', then republished with additional letters and poems written by and to Weston in 1608 and retitled 'Parthenicôn […] libri III'. While Weston’s religious verse constitutes a small part of her poetic output, a total of twelve poems, it represents various genres (epigrams, meditative verse, occasional poems). It also demonstrates a range of techniques and a familiarity with the conventions of Neo-Latin religious poetry and the sentiments expressed in much Counter-Reformation verse. Moreover, allusions to God and her faith appear in many other poems. This essay focuses on discussing the specifically religious poems but will also take into consideration some of Weston’s other expressions of faith and, to paraphrase her adopted motto, her hope in Christ.
Renaissance and Reformation/Renaissance et Réforme, 2020
This Introduction by Marie-Alice Belle and Brenda M. Hosington to this special issue on the 'tran... more This Introduction by Marie-Alice Belle and Brenda M. Hosington to this special issue on the 'transformative' processes, agents, and effects of early modern translations in both Britain and France explains how they contribute to a new dynamic and, in part, a new integrated approach to early modern translation. It also provides an Annex of French printed translations of texts by British authors, 1550-1660.
Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue canadienne de Littérature comparéee, 2019
The guest editors, Marie-Alice Belle and Brenda M. Hosington, discuss how Randall McLeod's term, ... more The guest editors, Marie-Alice Belle and Brenda M. Hosington, discuss how Randall McLeod's term, 'transformission', his portemanteauy word referring to the transformation and transmission that occurs when early modern texts change contexts, can be applied to early modern translation.
inTRAlinea, 2019
The role of translation in promoting and spreading the 'querelle des femmes', the woman controver... more The role of translation in promoting and spreading the 'querelle des femmes', the woman controversy, in the period from its first appearance in the late fifteenth century to the end of the seventeenth, is extremely important, although little has been written to date on the contribution of translated texts to this cultural phenomenon. This essay proposes a modest beginning to a needed study of these querelle-inspired translations in transit by discussing a few ways in which some Italian works made their way to England, ranging from tales in Boccacio's 'Decameron' to Ariosto''s 'Satires' and 'Orlando Furioso,' to general works on love, beauty, marriage, jealousy, and conduct. Once arrived in England, they were translated and their dynamics often transformed in order to make them more accessible and attractive to English readers and applicable to English women.
Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée, 2019
One vehicle for linguistic and cultural transformation is the formal printed discursive paratext,... more One vehicle for linguistic and cultural transformation is the formal printed discursive paratext, such as found in three of Anthony Munday’s translations: Ortensio Lando's 'Paradossi' (via Charles Estienne), Alexandre de Pontaymeri's 'Paradoxe Apologique', and Leon Battista Aberti's 'Ecatomphila'. All were participants in the transnational and transcultural phenomenon known as the 'querelle des femmes', but their paratexts, in typically metamorphic and shapeshifting mode, reframed the debate through the translator’s use of certain strategies. Amongst these were the appropriation and domestication of the foreign text for an English readership, a change in the ideological or political views presented in the source text, and a reworking of the sociocultural context in which the text was created. Reinforcing these transformations were the new and markedly different material features introduced by the printers, editors, and, possibly, in the case of Munday, the translator – collaborators in transformission.
Forum for Modern Language Studies, 2022
IN OUR FIRST FORAYS into the complex landscape of early modern (English) mediated translation, we... more IN OUR FIRST FORAYS into the complex landscape of early modern (English) mediated translation, we have come to identify a number of challenges and obstacles to research in this area, from the difficulty of accessing textual or biographical information, to deeper epistemological and critical biases that seem significantly harder to remedy. What follows is a joint reflection on the main issues that we are currently facing and working to address, and the prospects that research on early modern translations involving multiple textual, linguistic and material mediations may open up for scholars of the Renaissance and beyond. The first, obvious challenge concerns the task of identifying mediated translations. As noted by our colleagues in the Lisbon IndirecTrans research group, this is a general issue but it presents particular problems for the early modern period. 1 While catalogues of early modern literary production in various languages certainly exist, and offer crucial information pertaining to the study of early modern texts, mediated or not, translations still often remain relatively invisible as such. This is unfortunately the case even with the most recent edition of the Universal Short Title Catalogue (USTC), an otherwise impressive free-access online database combining resources from a vast array of libraries in Europe to offer a bibliographical survey of early modern print culture between 1450 and 1650. 3 While translations are technically tagged as such in the USTC, they still remain difficult to identify-perhaps due to the heterogeneous nature of the data and metadata compiled into the catalogue. A simple search using 'translat*' as a keyword returns 2176 English titles, while so far the verified number of texts translated into English for the period amounts to more than 6000, according to the Renaissance Cultural Crossroads Online Catalogue of Translations in Britain 1473-1640. 4 The difficulties inherent in compiling a cohesive corpus of translations, mediated or otherwise, for a given geographical area, or particular time period, was precisely what inspired the creation of the above-mentioned Renaissance Cultural Crossroads catalogue and its follow-up, Cultural Crosscurrents in Stuart and Commonwealth Britain. An Online Analytical Catalogue of Translations 1641-1660. Both
Forum for Modern Language Studies, 2022
Indirect or mediated translation has fairly recently become a topic of interest and investigation... more Indirect or mediated translation has fairly recently become a topic of interest and investigation in the field of Translation Studies. A group of early modernists/translation specialsts (Guyda Armstrong, Marie-Alice Belle, Anne Coldiron, Joshua Reid and myself) decided to investigate whether the observations and opinions of these Translation Studies scholars, based almost exclusively on a corpus of modern texts, were appliable to early modern indirect translation. With this aim in mind, this article engages (albeit virtually) in dialogue (in question and answer format), with one such scholar.
The Oxford Handbook of Early Modern Women's Writing in English 1540-1700 , 2022
Taken from Bathsua Makin's 1673 pamphlet, 'An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewome... more Taken from Bathsua Makin's 1673 pamphlet, 'An Essay to Revive the Ancient Education of Gentlewomen', the phrase 'mistresses of tongues' punningly alludes to women's indisputable linguistic abilities but also to the age-old proverbial slur, 'one tongue is enough for a woman'. Actually, Makin continues, 'Women have not been mere talkers (as some frivolous men would make them), but they have known how to use languages when they have had them' (sig. B2r). One way was to put their foreign language learning into multilingual practice through communicating translingually, sometimes orally, or through translation. They and their translated texts are the subject of this essay.
Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern English Women Writers, 2023
The concept of a linear transmission of source to target text was inherited from the humanist the... more The concept of a linear transmission of source to target text was inherited from the humanist theory of the translatio studii, the transfer of an ancient work to a new receiving language and culture. However, the trajectories of transmission are far more complex, constituting a matrix of intersecting and interrelating lines that crisscross, not simply linguistic, but also social and cultural spaces. One way in which scholars can map such pathways is by examining the networks in which translators and all those involved in the whole process of textual transfer and transmission participated, both directly (original authors, intermediate translators, printers, editors, booksellers, patrons, commissioners, some dedicatees) and indirectly (family members, friends, social contacts, facilitators, co-religionists, recipients of translations as gifts). This essay discusses the ways in which English Catholic women translators between 1500 and 1640 exercised agency by means of being actors in such networks and by transmitting, through their translations, foreign texts to a new and wider reading public, often using them as effective tools in ideological and political matters where other forms of intervention were forbidden to women.
Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern English Women Writers, 2023
It is no longer believed that early modern women translators stood on the margins of English lite... more It is no longer believed that early modern women translators stood on the margins of English literature and culture, passive bystanders as ideas, movements, and competing religious creeds swirled about them. Nor is it still thought that translation consists of silently and submissively reproducing an original text. The present essay argues that in both cases the contrary is true, taking as case studies English translations of French prose fiction by two early modern women translators. Susan Du Verger, by translating a selection of short stories and a novel by Jean-Pierre Camus, introduces his "new" form of prose fiction, the histoire dévote, to England, explaining and praising it both in her translations of his paratextual materials and in her own metadiscourse. Judith Man, translating Nicolas Coëffeteau's abridged and reoriented French version of John Barclay's 'Argenis', refocuses the entire work, textually, paratextually, and materially, on the portrayal of women and female virtue, which, although conservative, authorizes and enriches her engagement with the rather questionable genre of romance. Both translators, through their introduction of French authors and works to an English readership, contribute to the development of prose fiction in mid-seventeenth-century England.
Gender, Authorship, and Early Modern Women's Collaboration, 2017
Susan Du Verger and Judith Man, two seventeenth-century English translators of French texts, penn... more Susan Du Verger and Judith Man, two seventeenth-century English translators of French texts, penned valuable and revealing paratexts about themselves and their work. Their volumes also contained paratexts by other contributors. In all, the paratextual material in both publications stands as a witness to the collaboration that is an essential component of translation, while it also constitutes an important site of meta-textual commentary on gendered authorship.
Thresholds of Translation. Paratexrts, Print, and Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Britain (1473-1660), 2018
Renaissance Cultural Crossroads: Translation, Print and Culture in Britain, 1473-1640, 2013
The world of early English printing owed a debt to translations and translators that has not yet ... more The world of early English printing owed a debt to translations and translators that has not yet been fully evaluated, although several research projects and a number of publications have recently explored the rapport between early modern print and translation. This oversight is particularly true concerning the production of incunabula. This essay focuses on the over one hundred such publications in order to assess the role translation and translators played in responding to the demands of an avid and ever-increasing readership, and it provides a chronological list of translations printed in England between 1473 and 1500.
Thresholds of Translation. Paratexts, Print, and Cultural Exchange in Early Modern Britain (1473-1660), 2018
The titles of early modern translated works played an important role, and one that went beyond th... more The titles of early modern translated works played an important role, and one that went beyond that of a marketing device. Created by printers as well as by the translators themselves, they fulfilled the traditional functions of such paratexts (denotative, connotative, hermeneutic and commercial) but also, by being intertextual, represented a transfer of cultural capital and an exchange of connotative values. They also provided a space for making the foreign visible or invisible, but also for enhancing the status of the translation and the translator. The corpus of texts examined in the article came off the presses of three important London printers: Richard Pynson, John Wolfe and Thomas Harper.
Elizabeth Iin Writing: Language, Learning, and Power, 2018
This essay explores the young Princess Elizabeth's relationship to Latin and to translation, seen... more This essay explores the young Princess Elizabeth's relationship to Latin and to translation, seen in the letters she addressed to her father and brother and in her Latin rendering of Katherine Parr's 'Prayers or Meditacions' and Bernardino Ochino's sermon 'Che cosa e Christo & per che venne al mondo'. These works demonstrate that she was aware of the power of the written word and how she could harness that power to protect herself, reinforce family relationships, articulate the Tudor conception of the monarchy, and create a persona for herself, that of a learned and pious young woman. Thus language was for her a means of self-preservation in an unstable and sometimes threatening world.
Translation Studies, 2017
While translations have long been known to have played an important role in the development of th... more 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. We have drawn on Robert Darnton's
'communication circuit' model and others adapted from it to create the first model for studying printed translations in early modern England. It centres on translators as key partners and cultural agents and facilitates a more accurate investigation of translations as material and cultural objects. At the same time, it highlights the role of translators within socio-politicial and cultural networks that shaped the early modern English culture of print.
Renaissance Studies
Translation plays a crucial role in all fields of Renaissance activity, informing the Western his... more Translation plays a crucial role in all fields of Renaissance activity, informing the Western history of thought and and feeling, as George Steiner says, making the period one in which mother tongues became both the 'origine et horizon' of writing, according to Antoine Berman, and one in which translation became a distinct acitivity. Similar claims can be made with regard to the advent and spread of print in Western Europe. Developments in our research into both these areas of activity have also ploughed similar furrows and translation studies and print history, or history of the book, have often overlapped, although this is not always recognised by either translation or book historians. What is needed is an ecumenical approach that will provide an overview of translation and print in the period.
A Companion to the Early Printed Book in Britain, 1476-1558, 2014
The specific relationship of translation to the early book trade is a crucial one that needs furt... more The specific relationship of translation to the early book trade is a crucial one that needs further study. This relationship in terms of women's translations, in particular, has not to date been given sufficient attention. In the years 1504-57 seven women (Beaufort, Roper, Parr, Mary Tudor, the Princess Elizabeth, Cooke, and Basset) published translations against a backdrop of cultural and socio-historical events and in the emerging context of the English print trade. In so doing, they achieved a level of visibility and played a public role that have not always been appreciated, especially by those who would believe that translation was an ideal female occupation for the anonymity and privacy it offered.
'Booldly bot meekly'. Essays on the Thoery and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages in Honour of Roger Ellis, 2018
In 1545 the Princess Elizabeth offered Katherine Parr a New Year's gift, her translation of Chapt... more In 1545 the Princess Elizabeth offered Katherine Parr a New Year's gift, her translation of Chapter 1 of Jean Calvin's 'Institution de la vie chrestienne'. This paper examines her long dedicatory epistle in French and assesses her achievement. It argues that the work stands as an eloquent witness to her lifelong religious beliefs, linguistic ability, understanding of rhetoric and the astute use of paratextual space, and her precociously sophisticated engagement with one of Europe's foremost Reformers.
Seventeenth-Century Fiction: Text and Transmission, 2016
This is an assessment of Susan Du Verger's English translations of Jean-Pierre Camus's two collec... more This is an assessment of Susan Du Verger's English translations of Jean-Pierre Camus's two collections of short stories (1639) and novel, 'Diotrephe' (1641). These are to be understood in a Catholic, courtly context which promoted 'histoires dévotes' among the admirers and followers of Henrietta Maria. They are also a means of making known in England Camus's beliefs in the power of moral fiction to turn readers to virtue, both in their translations of his paratexts and in the creation of Du Verger's own.
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Articles and Book Chapters by Brenda M Hosington
'communication circuit' model and others adapted from it to create the first model for studying printed translations in early modern England. It centres on translators as key partners and cultural agents and facilitates a more accurate investigation of translations as material and cultural objects. At the same time, it highlights the role of translators within socio-politicial and cultural networks that shaped the early modern English culture of print.
'communication circuit' model and others adapted from it to create the first model for studying printed translations in early modern England. It centres on translators as key partners and cultural agents and facilitates a more accurate investigation of translations as material and cultural objects. At the same time, it highlights the role of translators within socio-politicial and cultural networks that shaped the early modern English culture of print.
a comparative survey of vernacular translations in France, Spain, Portugal, and Britain; Charles Estienne and translation as editorial mediation; vernacular translations of the Classics in sixteenth-century France; information design in sixteenth-century English translations; John Wolfe's 'Courtier' and transnationhood; Lipsius and two Dutch translations; the 'Relations jésuites' and the 'Historiae Canadensis'; translating chronicle, prognostication, and prophecy in Germany.
Written by an international team of scholars of translation and material culture, the ten essays in the volume examine the various material shapes, textual forms, and cultural uses of paratexts as markers (and makers) of cultural exchange in early modern Britain.
The collection will be of interest to scholars of early modern translation, print, and literary culture, and, more broadly, to those studying the material and cultural aspects of text production and circulation in early modern Europe.
Our main objective is therefore to challenge cultural and scholarly perceptions of indirect translation as secondary and somehow less deserving of critical attention than more conventional practices of linguistic and literary transfer in the early modern period.