Hostname: page-component-6bf8c574d5-mggfc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-02-16T15:59:53.102Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Literary Translation as Cultural Affiliation: The Case of Victorian Poetry and Classical Verse Composition

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2023

Spencer Lee-Lenfield
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The ability to translate English poetry into ancient Greek and Latin sat at the pinnacle of a Victorian classical education, but we rarely read the resulting Greek and Latin poetry as serious literature. Yet this corpus documents an important, culturally prestigious poetic practice that entrenched a narrative of cultural descent from Greece and Rome, affiliating modern British poetry with classical antecedents. Moreover, it taught generations of schoolboys (and some noteworthy schoolgirls) interpretive methods for understanding English poetry, thereby providing an arena in which the canon of English poets coalesced before the institutionalization of English literature in universities. I re-create the interpretive moves and cultural affiliations enacted through verse composition in the Victorian period, and I analyze particular verse compositions that shed new light on the classicizing context informing contemporary poetic creation.

Type
Essay
Information
PMLA , Volume 138 , Issue 3 , May 2023 , pp. 490 - 505
Copyright
Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Modern Language Association of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Aeschylus. Eumenides. Oresteia: Agamemnon, Libation-Bearers, Eumenides, edited and translated by Sommerstein, Alan H., Harvard UP, 2009, pp. 354–486. Loeb Classical Library 146.Google Scholar
Aeschylus. Suppliants. Persians, Seven against Thebes, Suppliants, Prometheus Bound, edited and translated by Sommerstein, Alan H., Harvard UP, 2009, pp. 277–431. Loeb Classical Library 145.Google Scholar
ἀκραιφνὴς [“Akraiphnēs”]. A Greek-English Lexicon, by Henry George Liddell et al., Oxford UP, 1996, p. 54.Google Scholar
Arnold, Matthew. “Dover Beach.” Poems, vol. 2, Macmillan, 1869, p. 108.Google Scholar
Benjamin, Walter. “The Task of the Translator.” Illuminations: Essays and Reflections, translated by Zohn, Harry, Schocken Books, 1985, pp. 11–25.Google Scholar
Butterfield, David. “Gradus ad Parnassum and Other Verse Composition Manuals.” Brill's Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, Craig Kallendorf, general editor, Brill, 2023, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004271296_enlo_B9789004271029_0033.Google Scholar
Churton Collins, John. Illustrations of Tennyson. Chatto and Windus, 1891.Google Scholar
Dickens, Charles. Bleak House. Bradbury and Evans, 1853.Google Scholar
Drury, Henricus [Henry]. Arundines Cami, sive Musarum Cantabrigiensium Lusus Canori. 2nd ed., J. G. Parker, J. and J. J. Deighton, 1843.Google Scholar
Duff, J. D. Preface. Translations into Latin and Greek Verse, by Munro, H. A. J., Arnold, Edward, 1906, pp. iii–vii.Google Scholar
Feeney, Denis. “Horace and the Greek Lyric Poets.” Horace 2000: A Celebration: Essays for the Bimillennium, edited by Rudd, Niall, Duckworth, 1993, pp. 41–63.Google Scholar
Flosculi Cheltonienses: A Selection from the Cheltenham College Prize Poems, 1846–1866. Edited by Jerram, Charles S. and James, Theodore W., Rivingtons, 1868.Google Scholar
Gray, Thomas. The Complete Poems of Thomas Gray: English, Latin and Greek. Edited by Starr, H. W. and Hendrickson, J. R., Clarendon Press, 1966.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guillory, John. Cultural Capital: The Problem of Literary Canon Formation. U of Chicago P, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Homer. Odyssey. Homeri opera, edited by Monro, David B. and Allen, Thomas W., vol. 3, Clarendon Press, 1912.Google Scholar
Horace. Ars poetica. Epistles, Book II, and Epistle to the Pisones, edited by Rudd, Niall, Cambridge UP, 1989, pp. 58–74.Google Scholar
Horace. Odes and Epodes. Edited and translated by Rudd, Niall, Harvard UP, 2004. Loeb Classical Library 33.Google Scholar
Hoskyns-Abrahall, John Jr. Verselets Latin and English. Henry, John and Parker, James / Longman, Roberts, and Green, 1863.Google Scholar
Hunt, Emma Monk. Prolusiones Puellares (The Lycidas of Milton, and Some Other Pieces, Translated into Latin Elegiac Verse by a Girl of Ten Years Old). 2nd ed., edited by Rusticus Dorsetiensis, T. and Shrimpton, G., 1870.Google Scholar
Hurst, Isobel. Victorian Women Writers and the Classics: The Feminine of Homer. Oxford UP, 2006.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jebb, Richard Claverhouse. Translations into Greek and Latin Verse. 1873. 2nd ed., Cambridge UP, 1907.Google Scholar
Merrick, J. M. Nugae Inutiles: Specimens of Translation. Henry L. Shepard, 1874.Google Scholar
Munro, H. A. J. Translations into Latin and Greek Verse. Edward Arnold, 1884.Google Scholar
Nixon, John Edwin, and Smith, E. H. C.. Parallel Verse Extracts: For Translation into English and Latin, with Special Prefaces on Idioms and Metres. Macmillan, 1893.Google Scholar
Nova Anthologia Oxoniensis: Translations into Greek and Latin Verse. Edited by Ellis, Robinson and Godley, A. D., Clarendon Press, 1899.Google Scholar
ὀκνέω [“Okneō”]. A Greek-English Lexicon, by Henry George Liddell et al., Oxford UP, 1996, p. 1212.Google Scholar
Ovid. Metamorphoses, Volume II: Books 9–15. Translated by Miller, Frank Justus, revised by G. P. Goold, Harvard UP, 1916. Loeb Classical Library 93.Google Scholar
φοινικόβαπτος [“Phoinikobaptos”]. A Greek-English Lexicon, by Henry George Liddell et al., Oxford UP, 1996, p. 1948.Google Scholar
Porter, David A. “Neo-Latin Literature—The British Isles: Later Centuries.” Brill's Encyclopaedia of the Neo-Latin World, Craig Kallendorf, general editor, Brill, 2023, http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/9789004271296_enlo_B9789004271029_0070.Google Scholar
Rouse, W. H. D. Demonstrations in Greek Iambic Verse. Cambridge UP, 1899.Google Scholar
Sabrinae Corolla. Edited by Kennedy, Benjamin et al., Bell et Daldy, 1859.Google Scholar
Said, Edward. “Secular Criticism.” The World, the Text, and the Critic, Harvard UP, 1983, pp. 1–30.Google Scholar
Sisam, Kenneth. Review of The Rise of English Studies: An Account of the Study of English Language and Literature from Its Origin to the Making of the Oxford English School, by D. J. Palmer. The Review of English Studies, vol. 18, no. 70, 1967, pp. 229–31.Google Scholar
Sophocles. The Electra of Sophocles. Edited and translated by Jebb, Richard, Cambridge UP, 1894.Google Scholar
Sophocles. The Oedipus at Colonus of Sophocles. Edited and translated by Jebb, Richard, Cambridge UP, 1889.Google Scholar
Stray, Christopher. Classics in Britain: Scholarship, Education, and Publishing 1800–2000. Oxford UP, 2018.Google Scholar
Stray, Christopher. Classics Transformed: Schools, Universities, and Society in England, 1830–1960. Oxford UP, 1998.Google Scholar
Tennyson, Alfred. In Memoriam. Edited by Gray, Erik, W. W. Norton, 2020.Google Scholar
Tennyson, Alfred. “Tithonus.” Tennyson: A Selected Edition, edited by Ricks, Christopher, Longman, 2014, pp. 992–94.Google Scholar
Tennyson, Alfred. “Ulysses.” Tennyson: A Selected Edition, edited by Ricks, Christopher, Longman, 2014, pp. 138–45.Google Scholar
Tennyson, Hallam. Alfred Lord Tennyson: A Memoir. Macmillan, 1897.Google Scholar
Tucker, Herbert. “Dramatic Monologue and the Overhearing of Lyric.” Lyric Poetry beyond New Criticism, edited by Hošek, Chaviva and Parker, Patricia, Cornell UP, 1985, pp. 226–43.Google Scholar
Venuti, Lawrence. The Scandals of Translation. Routledge, 1998.CrossRefGoogle Scholar