6 - Virgilian Space in Renaissance French Translations of the Aeneid

Summary

Recent critics of the Aeneid in compendia such as The Cambridge Companion to Virgil still debate the exact nature of Virgil's epic and the political sentiments its author sought to impart. For example, that volume's editor, Martindale, focuses in his introduction on the unresolved debate over whether the poem is firmly pro-Augustan or a subtle critique of empire and emperor; Hardie proposes a reading emphasising the tragedy which runs through the work, while in contrast Barchiesi demonstrates the importance of a device such as ecphrasis in contextualising heroic elements. Other contributors remind us of the range of reactions provoked by what T.S. Eliot termed “the classic of all Europe.” Not only have earlier readers of Virgil often disagreed fiercely with each other, but – as readers of the Aeneid still intuitively feel – they are often torn in their own reactions: witness most famously St Augustine rebuking himself for weeping over Dido's fate. If it is unsurprising that this work left its mark on poets as individual and different as Dante, Milton, Scarron, Dryden and Eliot, it is nonetheless remarkable that so many other writers, both famous and pedestrian, felt impelled to undertake and publish translations into their own vernacular, not least in the first two centuries of print culture. Such translations may tell a rather different tale from more creative forms of imitation, or rather they may tell several different tales simultaneously.