EN356 and EN357
UNIVERSITY OF WARWICK
Summer Examinations 2013-2014
EN356 The Classical Tradition in English Translation: The Renaissance
EN357 The Classical Tradition in English Translation: The Eighteenth Century to the Present
Students sitting both EN356 and EN357 have two hours to answer one question from Section A and one question from Section B.
Students sitting only EN356 have one hour to answer one question from Section A.
Students sitting only EN357 have one hour to answer one question from Section B.
Read carefully the instructions on the answer book and make sure that the particulars required are entered on each answer book.
Do not substantially repeat material from assessed essays.
SECTION A: Answer ONE of the following questions.
1. ‘Just as men who copy a painting borrow the shape, attitude, stance and general appearance therefrom, not thinking what they themselves would do, but what another has done; so in translation the best translator will turn his whole mind, heart and will to his original author, and in a sense transform him...’ (Leonardo Bruni,
On the Correct Way to Translate ). What does the analogy between painting and translating tell us about Bruni’s conception of the translator’s art?
2. In the eighteenth century, the classical scholar Richard Bentley said of Alexander Pope’s English translation of the Iliad
: ‘It is a pretty poem, Mr Pope, but you must not call it Homer’. Is Bentley’s criticism equally valid for the English translations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?
3. Did Vergil’s sixteenth-century English translators transmit the ancient poet’s sympathy for Dido, or did they qualify it?
4. Is it true that Ovid’s fascination with the idea of transformation renders his work peculiarly receptive to both translation and adaptation?
5. In the sixteenth century, what compromises were English poets obliged to make, and what opportunities did they manage to exploit, when translating ancient drama for contemporary audiences?
6. How are Lucan’s political aims in his Civil War received by his earliest English translators?
7. Assess Shakespeare’s debt to EITHER Ovid OR Plutarch.