10 - Du Bellay's Dido and the Translation of Nation

Summary

In the preface to his 1552 collection of translations from Virgil, Ovid and Ausonius, Joachim Du Bellay describes his translation project in terms that cannot but evoke his Deffence, et illustration de la langue françoyse published just three years earlier: “je veux bien encor' donner à nostre langue quelques miens ouvrages, qui seront … les derniers fruicts de nostre jardin” (I should still like to offer up to our language some of my works which will be … the latest fruits from our garden). In order to meet with “plus grande faveur” (greater favour) he will start “non par æuvres de mon invention, mais par la translation de quatriesme livre de L'Eneide” (not with works of my own invention, but with the translation of the fourth Book of the Aeneid) (p. 249). this statement to “encor' donner à nostre langue quelques miens ouvrages” and the idea of helping cultivate France's garden suggests that this translation continues his illustration of the French language. Indeed, if one did not know better, one might think that translation was an integral element of Du Bellay's project of illustrating the French language.