Creative Classical Translation

This Element surveys transmissions of ancient Greek and Latin texts into anglophone literatures, often straddling boundaries between translational responsibility and adaptive, re-creative textual practices. Attention to manifestations of and reasons for versioning, retranslation, hybridity, and translation as experiment, compels an introductory discussion of evolving tendencies of classical reception; with particular dispositions relating to a sociocultural context such as that of the United States observed in Section 3. The role paratexts play in the dialogue between scholarship, literary art, and performance, is the focus of Section 4, while Section 2 presents readers with a range of English responses to Homer. Creativity through sites and positions of translation is a defining feature of the workings of literary traditions; and of antiquity and modernity, in constant dialogue. This Element explores numerous textual manifestations and reasons for invention, along with integrations of thinking on classical translation over the centuries, helping shape present-day translation studies.