After ... life in creative translation : a critical study of modern English poetic translations from selected Greek, Latin, and Italian poets

Abstract

The scope of the research is indicated by the sub-title, “A Critical Study of Modern English Poetic Translations from Selected Greek, Latin, and Italian Poets”: the poets selected are Homer, Catullus, Horace, Ovid, and Dante, and the translations are by a range of modern English poet-translators. After an opening chapter that is mainly theoretical, the study offers detailed critical analyses of the original poems or extracts and also of the translations into modern English poetry, to investigate whether the modern English poetic translations confirm the validity of Middleton’s claim, “how centrally the art of translation has mattered in the history of English poetry” (Christopher Middleton in “The Presence of Translation: A View of English Poetry” in The Art of Translation: Voices from the Field, edited by Rosanna Warren (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989), p. 258). The analysis assesses the achievement of twentieth-century English poettranslators in their translations of the selected Greek, Latin, and Italian extracts or poems and demonstrates that poetic translations have become a peculiarly sensitive form of literary criticism as well as creative works of art in their own right. The research concludes by formulating some critical categories of and criteria for creative translation that will assist in the practice of poetic translation and in the critical examination of poetic translations.