A King Translated: The Writings of King James VI & I and their Interpretation in the Low Countries, 1593–1603. By Astrid Stilma. St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Farnham: Ashgate, 2012. ix + 332 pp. $134.95 cloth.

Abstract

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.)A King Translated: The Writings of King James VI & I and their Interpretation in the Low Countries, 1593-1603 . By Astrid Stilma . St. Andrews Studies in Reformation History. Farnham : Ashgate , 2012. ix + 332 pp. $134.95 cloth.Book Reviews and NotesJames Stuart--James VI of Scotland and I of England--was a prolific author. Beginning while still in his teens, James wrote on a variety of topics, ranging from religion to rulership to the evils of tobacco. Most modern scholarly analysis of James' writings begins with the assumption that these texts constituted a deliberate performance of a carefully wrought public persona, and Astrid Stilma's erudite new monograph does not depart from this basic supposition. Stilma's main emphasis, however, is not on James' own textual self-construction, but rather on how a particular interpretive community--in this case, Dutch Protestants--printed, sold, bought, read and (13) these texts in order to serve their own particular political and religious agendas.Stilma examines Dutch translations of James' works (translated between 1593 and 1603 from London editions) and finds that Dutch Protestants used James' ideas to create and maintain a protestant identity for themselves, and to convince themselves that James would continue Elizabeth's support of the protestant Low Countries' fight against Roman Catholic Spain. When James ascended to the English throne, he may have meant to present himself as Rex Pacificus , but the political and religious anxieties of those who translated and disseminated James' writings into Dutch shaped him into an ultra-Protestant knight in shining armour (16). This is not to say that the translators deliberately misrepresented James' ideas; Stilma establishes that overt manipulation was rare, with translators and publishers relying more on prefaces and other paratextual material to frame James' words to their and their audiences' liking.The first chapter of A King Translated introduces readers to the Dutch translators and publishers, while the second chapter offers background and context concerning the art and science of translation in early modern Europe. The remaining four chapters focus on particular texts. In chapter 3, Stilma looks at The Battle of Lepanto, James' epic poem recounting a 1571 naval victory over the Turkish fleet by a confederation of Christian navies. Much has been written about whether or not James implicitly sanctioned Roman Catholicism with his celebration of Don John, the undeniably Catholic leader of the Christians. Stilma does not think so, and argues that in approaching the poem as a Protestant allegory, Abraham Van der Myl's 1593 translation preserved the spirit and intention of the original piece when it made a case for the inevitability of protestant ascendency.Perhaps James' most well-known work is Basilikon Doron . Written as a letter to James' eldest son, Basilikon Doron was published in Scotland in 1599. …