Simon Bourgouin, traducteur à l’avant-garde

Abstract

The article focuses on Simon Bourgouin, translator as well as writer of original works, active between the end of 15th and the beginning of 16th century. He started his career translating some of Plutarch’s Lives, mostly carried out on the basis of their Latin translations, even if some are made on the original texts by Italian Humanists. The verse translation of Petrarch’s Triumphs, for which Bourgouin relied on the Italian source text, dates back to the same period. The third work he turned into French is the True Story by Lucian of Samosata. Bourgouin’s text choices anticipate the literary tastes of 16th-century France: his Lives were published sixty years before the celebrated translation by Amyot, while his Triumphs ushered in the various 16th-century verse translations of Petrarch’s poems. Most of the manuscripts containing the French version of Plutarch’s and Petrarch’s texts are richly illustrated luxury codices, also providing a paratext with Bourgouin’s mottoes or monograms. His professionalism is also shown by the fact that he keeps modernizing the language of his translations as new copies of his works are required.