Translating Petrarch in early modern Britain gathers twelve essays by international scholars focusing on the translation of Petrarch's vernacular verse (Canzoniere and Triumphi) into English, from the Tudor age to the mid-seventeenth century (and beyond).
Approaching translation as an interpretive process, but also a mode of literary emulation and cultural engagement with Petrarch's prestigious precedent, the collection explores the complex and interconnected trajectories of both poetic works in English and Scottish literary milieux. While situating each translation in its distinct historical, material, and literary context, the essays trace the reception of Petrarch's works in early modern Britain through the combined processes of linguistic and metric innovation, literary imitation, musical adaptation and cultural and material 'domestication'.
The collection sheds light on the origins and development of early modern English Petrarchism as part of wider transnational
and indeed, translational - European literary culture.
Edited by:
Marie-Alice Belle,
Riccardo Raimondo,
Francesco Venturi
Imprint: Manchester University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 240mm,
Width: 170mm,
Spine: 21mm
Weight: 673g
ISBN: 9781526173034
ISBN 10: 1526173034
Pages: 360
Publication Date: 01 September 2025
Audience:
General/trade
,
ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Introduction – Marie-Alice Belle, Riccardo Raimondo, Francesco Venturi Part I: Fashioning English Petrarchism: translation, poetics, and the English miscellany 1 ‘Imitating very naturally and studiously their Maister Francis Petrarcha’: the Englishing of the Canzoniere in the early Tudor period – Andrew Hiscock 2 ‘I wote full well where is a file | To frame a learned man’: the unknown Petrarchs of Tottel’s uncertain authors – William T. Rossiter 3 Rank and style: Petrarch in the Elizabethan verse miscellanies, from Tottel to Donne – Neil Rhodes 4 The Cavalier Petrarch: translation and coterie culture in Caroline and Civil War England – Nicholas McDowell Part II: Re-mediating Petrarchan poetry: lines of transmission and transformation 5 ‘Laurae solius in umbra’? Explicating Petrarch in Thomas Watson’s Hekatompathia (1582) – Rémi Vuillemin 6 Repeating Petrarch: Rvf 323 and its translations by Clément Marot and Edmund Spenser – Jennifer Rushworth 7.‘After the affection of the noate’: intersemiotic translations of Petrarch in the English madrigal tradition – K. Dawn Grapes and Jeremy L. Smith Part III: Re-framing the Triumphi: genre, paratext, gender 8 Time and mortality in English Renaissance translations of Petrarch’s Italian poems – Alessandra Petrina 9 Sign of its times: Lord Morley’s translation of Petrarch’s Triumphi – Massimiliano Morini 10 The Castalians, translation and Petrarch in Scotland: the works of William Fowler – Allison L. Steenson 11 Anna Hume, translator of Petrarch’s first three Triumphi and ‘glossatrice extraordinaire’ – Brenda M. Hosington 12 Envoi: Naturalising the Petrarchan sonnet in Romantic Britain: John Nott’s translations, 1777 and 1808 – Juan Christian Pellicer Index -- .
Marie-Alice Belle is Professor of Translation Studies at the Universite de Montreal and Associate researcher in English studies at Universite Paris III-Sorbonne Nouvelle. Riccardo Raimondo is Assistant Professor in French Linguistics and Translation Studies at the University of Catania. Francesco Venturi is Professor of Italian Literature at the University of Oslo (Norway) and at the University of L'Aquila.
