Virgil's English Translators

This book considers the writers who translated Virgil into English during the civil wars, Interregnum and early years of the Stuart Restoration (c. 1636–c. 1661). It argues that these writers translated and imitated Virgil in order to display and interrogate their political loyalties, articulate personal responses to past traumas, draw attention to the contingent nature of the systems of government which followed the death of Charles I in 1649 (particularly Oliver Cromwell’s Protectorate) and express their hopes for the country’s future. This future often, but not invariably, imagined a restored Stuart monarchy under Charles II, and all of the translators in this period spent time in royal service or were associated with the royalist cause. Their writings, however, demonstrate that royalism encompassed a wide variety of opinions, some of which emphasised a sense of duty to an individual or dynasty, but others were more committed to monarchy as an institution or to monarchical forms of government. This book also situates the translations within each author’s wider body of work in order to identify further political resonances in their individual receptions of Virgil and illuminate Virgil’s broader status and cultural function in the period.