Políticas de traducción de las Metamorfosis. Ovidio en la Inglaterra en el siglo xviii

Abstract

Even though the fame Ovid achieved in the Renaissance had already declined, the eighteenth century saw a renewed interest in translating the classics. Resulting translations resonate particularly with Enlightenment values, such as philological precision and the rationalist paradigm. Such is the case of the 1717 edition of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, published in England by Jacob Tonson and coordinated by Samuel Garth, with the collaboration of eighteen distinguished translators, including some of the most celebrated poets of the period: John Dryden and Alexander Pope. A trained physician who loved poetry, Garth explains his goals and criteria in the prologue to the work. Such criteria were discarded as peculiar and idiosyncratic by his contemporaries, but even if that were the case, they constitute a significant document for the history and theory of translation, and for the study of the reception of Ovid at the time.