In this talk, I outline Pope’s practice of incorporating lines and phrases from an extremely wide range of texts into his translations of Homer. I examine what the presence of these other voices in the poem, who include writers that Pope criticised as hacks and dunces as well as those who he admired and emulated, can tell us about his working methods as a translator. I subsequently consider whether or not Pope expected readers other than himself to recognise his borrowings in the translation, and how this question might inform the level of detail to which, in the interests of preserving readerly interest (and editorial sanity), the edition of Pope’s Homer that I am currently working towards should provide regarding the alterations he made to the Greek original.
Biography:
Ian Calvert is Lecturer in Eighteenth-Century Literature at the University of Bristol. His research focuses on the literary afterlives of classical texts across the long eighteenth century, and takes a particular interest in epic, translation, and allusion. He has published a number of articles on these topics in The Review of English Studies, Translation and Literature, The International Journal of the Classical Tradition, and elsewhere. His book, Virgil's English Translators, Civil Wars to Restoration, was published by Edinburgh University Press in 2021. He is currently working on edition of Pope's Homer translations for The Oxford Edition of the Writings of Alexander Pope.
The event will be online, To register: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/703107953817?aff=oddtdtcreator