Lives after Life

Abstract

This chapter explores the relationship between translations of Ovid’s poetry and arguments about literary taste. Its premise is that translations were part of wider cultural and literary movements; and prefatory material, particularly characterizations of the author, functioned programmatically to introduce and situate the ensuing translation. The chapter focuses on three distinctive moments of translation: the renditions of Ovid of the 1620s, the burlesque versions of the 1650s, and the galant translations of the last third of the century. It demonstrates that they were variously engaged with different forms of cultural confrontation, not only between ancient and modern culture, but also, in the earlier decades particularly, between France and Italy, and later with the tensions both caused by and within the aesthetic and cultural mode of galanterie; it explores how they use portrayals of Ovid to engage in such confrontation.