Research Catalog

Women as translators in early modern England

Title: Women as translators in early modern England / Deborah Uman.
Author: Uman, Deborah, 1969-
Publication: Newark : University of Delaware Press ; Lanham, Md. : Co-published with Rowman & Littlefield, ©2012.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Filter by

1 Item

Item details
Status	Format	Access	Call Number	Item Location
Request for On-site Use Request Scan How do I pick up this item and when will it be ready?	Text	Use in library	PR131 .U43 2012	Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 166 pages; 24 cm

Summary

Women as Translators in Early Modern England offers a feminist theory of translation that considers both the practice and representation of translation in works penned by early modern women. It argues for the importance of such a theory in changing how we value women's work. Because of England's formal split from the Catholic Church and the concomitant elevation of the written vernacular, the early modern period presents a rich case study for such a theory. This era witnessed not only a keen interest in reviving the literary glories of the past, but also a growing commitment to humanist education, increasing literacy rates among women and laypeople, and emerging articulations of national sentiment. Moreover, the period saw a shift in views of authorship, in what it might mean for individuals to seek fame or profit through writing. Until relatively recently in early modern scholarship, women were understood as excluded from achieving authorial status for a number of reasons--their limited education, the belief that public writing was particularly scandalous for women, and the implicit rule that they should adhere to the holy trinity of "chastity, silence, and obedience." While this view has changed significantly, women writers are still understood, however grudgingly, as marginal to the literary culture of the time. Fewer women than men wrote, they wrote less, and their "choice" of genres seems somewhat impoverished; add to this the debate over translation as a potential vehicle of literary expression and we can see why early modern women's writings are still undervalued. This book looks at how female translators represent themselves and their work, revealing a general pattern in which translation reflects the limitations women faced as writers while simultaneously giving them the opportunity to transcend these limitations. Indeed, translation gave women the chance to assume an authorial role, a role that by legal and cultural standards should have been denied to them, a role that gave them ownership of their words and the chance to achieve profit, fame, status and influence. About the Author Deborah Uman is associate professor of English at St. John Fisher College. Publisher's note.

Subject

Genre/Form

Criticism, interpretation, etc.
History.

Bibliography (note)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

"This defective edition": gender and translation. Translation, metaphor and allusion; Women translators; Translation and authorship -- Defending translation. Strategic humility: prefacing translation; Defending women's work: Margaret Tyler; Defending women's knowledge: Aphra Behn -- Echoing Eve: sacred imitations and the tradition of women's poetry. Anne Vaughan Lock's ambivalent I; Mary Sidney Herbert's non-apology for poetry; Aemilia Lanyer's imitations of Eden -- Staging translation. Witnessing education: Jane Lumley's The tragedie of Iphigeneia; Living monuments: Mary Sidney Herbert's Antonius; Friendship and empire: Katherine Philips' Pompey and Horace -- Embodying the translatress. Writing on trees: transforming classical and Petrarchan conventions; Writing on the body: translating narratives of empire -- Conclusion.

ISBN

9781611493856
1611493854
9781644531006
1644531003
9781611493863
1611493862

LCCN

2012000474

OCLC

ocn773019402
773019402
SCSB-14522891

Owning Institutions

Princeton University Library