This essay is an examination of the early translation history of Batrachomyomachia, a miniature epic poem of just 300 lines often transmitted with the Homeric corpus, into English. The earliest five translations are those of William Fowldes (1603), George Chapman (1624), Samuel Parker (1700), Thomas Parnell (1717) and Samuel Wesley (1726). My study of the reception of this poem in its earliest English translations reveals that it is recruited into a range of moral, political and literary causes. I first examine the tactics adopted by the earliest translators to deal with the special challenges posed by the poem and then I show that the battlefield within the poem translates into a battlefield about translation that is conducted in and through the translations of the poem. In particular, I show how Batrachomyomachia is harnessed to defend and enhance the status of Dryden and Pope as translators of the major Greco-Roman epics.
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Thanks to UBC students Darrel Janzen, for bibliographical and technical assistance, and Adam Barker, for researching the Homeric language for me. Thanks to my colleague Toph Marshall, for his astute comments and for sharing his unpublished paper with me. Thanks to the excellent audience at the University of Washington for their energetic and engaged response to an oral version of this paper; it was especially delightful to meet Larry Bliquez, fellow enthusiast for the poem, there. Finally, thanks to the editor for keeping me to the highest academic standards.
International Journal of the Classical Tradition, Vol. 18, No. 4, December 2011, pp. 547–568.
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Braund, S. Translation as a Battlefield: Dryden, Pope and the frogs and mice. Int class trad 18, 547–568 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-011-0281-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-011-0281-0