The Politics of the Partial Translations of the Aeneid by Dudley Digges and Marie de Gournay

This is a comparative study of two almost exactly contemporary translations of Book 4 of Virgil's Aeneid: Marie de Gournay's of the last 500 lines (published 1620), and Sir Dudley Digges’ of the whole Book (published 1622). I show how these translators participated in what could be called ‘communities of Virgil translation’ in the early seventeenth century: they were both conspicuously part of local cultures of appropriating and translating Virgil, and these cultures provide the necessary context for reading these works. Second, I argue that one of the distinctive qualities of partial translations of the Aeneid in the early seventeenth century is that they make it possible to draw out particular political themes quickly and to enter them into the public debate. These themes are certainly not always the obvious ones.