The Oxford History of Literary Translation in English, Vol. 3 : 1660–1790 (review)

We are overrun with histories – English literary histories, histories of English literature, histories of Scottish literature, histories of literary criticism, histories of the book, not to speak of period histories. Someof these respond to modification of the canon. Recently discovered or revalued works – many by women writers – form a new, augmented canon. New contexts, too, must be brought to bear: social history, political history, and the history of the book. Not least of these isthe transnational context of translated literature (both classical and modern). Other 'histories' go in for arbitrary political groupings or regroupings, in which major authors are liable to be omitted. At their worst such histories are in effect gatherings of essays bearing little relation to the proportions of literature. Collections of essays being not very popular with publishers, they are disguised as histories. Others again resemble diachronic cultural studies, in which the hierarchy of major and minor works is ignored. Cultural histories answer a demand for surveys free from aesthetics: making no assumptions of taste, they appeal to those who have none. Besides, dissensions about major status might threaten the house of literature at a time when English studies of all kinds are under attack. Do histories of translation fall into this group, in that they can treat questions of quality as matters of technique? Do they assume a positivistic method, like that of most literary history before the New Criticism?

Such apprehensions fall away before the five-volume Oxford History of Literary Translation in English: it is in a superior category altogether, obviously planned with careful thought and organization. In Volume 3, edited by Stuart Gillespie and David Hopkins, the topics are assigned to thirty-two contributors from six countries. It deals with translation and translations in the period 1660–1790, although its exact subject proves hard to pin down. As set out in the Foreword by the General Editors, Peter France and Stuart Gillespie, the aim is 'to present for the first time a critical and historical overview of the development of this art or craft in the English-speaking world'. In the Preface (by Gillespie and Hopkins), the aim is 'to explore the rich tradition of translated literature in English, and its centrality to the "native" tradition'. Values of high artistic achievement are to be stressed, yet literary is used in the 'broad old sense' of 'letters' – whatever the literary public reads. Moreover, 'the history of translation is also the history of translators' and of 'the norms and principles which governed their practice'. These claims are admirable, but may be disparate: the history of the art of translation is not the same as the history of the translated book. In the first chapter, Gillespie adds further 'related subjects' for exploration: 'the effects of translation on perceptions of the English literary canon; the assimilation of translations themselves into that canon; the perceived place of translations in the work of canonical English writers of the period; and translations as a means of establishing a canonical status for their originals'.

Five volumes may appear rather a lot for a history of translation;but they prove few enough: some parts of this volume seem if anything too compressed. The matter of translation is so vast as to elude any single contributor, so the main topics are shared between several. David Hopkins disentangles the various issues of Dryden's theories of translation, forged in the heat of poetic practice and formulated in occasional publications: the calculus of method (phrase by phrase, paraphrase, or imitation), degrees of fidelity (from crib to free imitation), and changes of view, as on rhyme or topicality. The great Æneis is left to Robin Sowerby, the Fables to others again. Four chapters concern translators and their readership in the book trade: 'The Translator's Trade'; 'Poetic Translators'; 'Tobias Smollett: a Case Study' (in lieu of an impossible overview of all prose translation); and 'Women [End Page 253...