Seventeenth-Century French Translations of Don Quixote as Supplement and Improvement

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

Abstract

From the early 17th century to the early 18th century, Cervantes’s famous knight-errant had at least four names in French: Don Quixote, Dom-Quichot, Don Quixotte and Don Quichotte. Comparing different French translations of "Don Quixote" points to broader changes in early modern French theories and practices of translation. This paper examines paratexts and selected episodes in translations of Cervantes’s work by César Oudin (1560–1625), François de Rosset (1571–1619), and François Filleau de Saint-Martin (1632–95). When read together, the books’ paratexts and the translators’ recreations of Don Quixote’s visit to a print shop illustrate shifting conceptions of the literary translator’s task. Oudin and Rosset follow a translation-as-supplement model, while Filleau de Saint-Martin follows a translation-as-improvement model. This transition in theoretical and practical approaches to Spanish to French translation coincides with the French elite’s increasing confidence in print-based literary culture and in the aesthetic value of the French language.

Author

• Jenny Marie Forsythe, University of California, Los Angeles