Translation Of Metamorphoses Research Articles

Księgi Metamorphoseon by W. Otwinowski as the Source for Russian Translations of Ovid’s Metamorphoses in Early 18th Century: Nomination of Sanctuaries

The article examines the translation of lexemes nominating shrines in Polish Ovid’s Metamorphoses adaptation Księgi Metamorphoseon, to jest, Przemian od Publiusa Owidiusza Nasona Wierszami opisane made by Walerian Otwinowski in 1638. From this Polish verse translation in early 18th century was made both Russian translations of Metamorphoses. Thus the results of present study can be considered also as starting point for further examination of Russian translations. It is determined that in Otwinowski’s version lexeme kościół was chosen as a unified neutral equivalent for some different Latin nominations of pagan sanctuaries. Comparison with another Polish translation of Metamorphoses, Jakob Żebrowski’s Metamorphoseon, to jest Przeobrażenia ksiąg piętnaście (1636), shows that Otwinowski’s decision to translate different Latin lexical equivalents by unified lexical item is a distinctive feature of his translation. For further study in translation techniques in both Russian translations it is important that the Polish origin (Otwinowski’s translation) itself doesn’t represent a field for a variety of translation correspondences within considered lexemes.

L'Ovide connu par Alphonse X (1221–84)

The first Castilian translation of Ovid's Metamorphoses was in the General estoria , a wide-ranging universal history composed in the historiographical workshop of Alfonso X the Wise, king of Castile (1221–84). The General estoria translated both Ovid's text and its medieval gloss, which had developed in long and complex commentaries during the second half of the thirteenth century. While it is easy to identify which sections the Castilian version added to the original text, it it more difficult to attribute them to a specific commentary or author. However, the characteristics of the translated gloss, the location in the General estoria into which it is inserted, and its contents, enable one to reconstruct the type of Metamorphoses manuscript that was likely available in the Alphonsine scriptorium. The identifiable features of the codex potentially used in the General estoria translation shed light on its intimate relationship with the copy known by the author of the Ovide moralise (ca. 1320), a poem containing the first translation of the Metamorphoses into French, and the first complete translation into any Romance language. In this article, I present the main conclusions drawn from the study of the gloss on the Metamorphoses translated in the General estoria , and its correspondences with medieval Latin commentaries and manuscripts on one hand, and with the exegesis translated in the Ovide moralise on the other.

An Unpublished English Augustan Translation of Metamorphoses, Book I

Preserved among the Rawlinson Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, Oxford, is a manuscript containing various poetical and dramatic pieces, including (in folios 82r-87v) a complete English translation of Book I of Ovid’s Metamorphoses.1 The version seems to be completely unknown, and has never previously been printed. It is of some intrinsic merit, and considerable historical interest as the only separate English version of Book I apart from Dryden’s to have survived from the late seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. The text is supplied below in a modernized ‘reading edition’. MS Rawlinson poet. 3 is a bound volume of large dimensions, its pages ruled with vertical red lines of a kind which suggests that it was originally intended as a ledger. The boards are crudely covered in vellum which seems to have been recycled from a legal document, probably an indenture. Some of the contents are neatly written, while others are of much rougher appearance, showing signs of hasty composition, and containing heavy correction and overwriting. The translation of Metamorphoses I is unique in being set out in a doublecolumn format. Close inspection suggests that, despite its superficially diverse appearance, the whole MS is the product of a single hand. Several leaves (fos. 47b, 48, 49, 88) have been crudely torn out, leaving only fragments of text visible. The contents of the MS are not fully enumerated in the Bodleian catalogue, but have some bearing on the question of authorship. They are as follows: