Amphibious Author: Abel Boyer, Iphigénie, and Huguenot Migration

Abstract

This article centres on the idea of an ‘amphibious author’, an epithet applied to the London-based Huguenot writer, lexicographer, and translator Abel Boyer (1667?–1729). Cross-channel migration of word-usages corresponded with the migration of people. While the French term ‘amphibie’ was used in relation to suspected Huguenot status in early modern France, the English counterpart, ‘amphibious’, could be used to keep a French migrant writer at bay. The ‘amphibiousness’, the half-Englishness, half-Frenchness, of Abel Boyer was negotiated through his translation of Racine’s Iphigénie, a play which presents characters displaced by state politics. While Boyer adapted the surface to English taste for varied spectacle, the undercurrents of his translation – repeated emphasis on the transitional setting and character duality – reveal an interpretation which resonates with his own status. The satirical epithet is not merely a label, but a productive means of investigating the translation work and reception of a Huguenot migrant.