Translation as Enslavement: Thomas Drant, Horace, and Jeremiah

• In Event: Translation Theory and Practice during the Renaissance: A Medium, a Genre, a Risk III

Abstract

In his 1566 book, "A medicinable moral," Drant juxtaposes his verse translations of Horace’s "Satires" and the book of "Lamentations." With Horace, Drant writes he has “done as the people of god wer commanded to do with their captive women that were hansome and beautifull: I have shaved of his hair, & pared of his nayles (that is) I have wyped awaye all his vanitie.” Figuring translation as an act of violence and enslavement, Horace is made to serve Drant’s Christian purposes and is stripped of any tempting beauty. However, in translating "Lamentations¸" which begins when Jerusalem has “become a slave,” Drant writes that “the Hebrew…deforme[s] the vain of the english.” The violence here is reversed. I argue that Drant’s translations put his theories into practice, subjugating the Latin to English sense and Christian morality, but subjecting the English to Hebrew syntax and Jewish sympathy.

Author

• Andrew Wells, University of Utah