British Academy: The UK's National Academy for the Humanities and Social Sciences
Dryden in the 1690s: The Virgil and the Fables
Abstract
Dryden’s Virgil in a comparative light
Professor Richard Jenkyns, University of Oxford
This paper will sample some passages from Dryden’s translations of Virgil and compare them with other translators, both before and after him. In part the purpose will be to investigate how Dryden and others conceived Virgil: for example, 16 th- and 17 th-century versions of the Eclogues indicate with some clarity how the dominant idea of pastoral changed in this period. But the aim will also be to study how Dryden faced the problems of translating a poet especially admired for his verbal art, partly by considering his own discussion of the matter and partly by examination of the translations themselves. Matthew Arnold declared that the heroic couplet could not adequately represent Homer; a nicer question is how well it can represent Virgil.
Relevant publications
Virgil's Experience (1998)
Classical Epic (1992)
(as editor) The Legacy of Rome (1992)