The Translator’s Invisibility

Denham sought to distinguish his translation from burlesque versions of the Aeneid that were fashionable on the Continent, Paul Scarron’s Virile Travesti (1648–1649) and Giovanni Battista Lalli’s Eneide Travestita (1633) (Scarron 1988:10). He, like other translators associated with the exiled Caroline court, was following another French fashion in translation, although one linked closer to a monarchy whose absolutist experiment proved effective: D’Ablancourt’s version of the Annals was dedicated to the powerful royal minister Cardinal Richelieu. Denham’s translation of Virgil in fact reflects the strong resemblance between English and French translation methods during the period. But the deep nationalism of this method works to conceal its origins in another national culture—a contradiction that occurs in Denham’s case because the method answers so specifically to an English problem: the need for {51} a “new” cultural practice that will enable the defeated royalist segment of the Caroline aristocracy to regain its hegemonic status in English culture. In his commendatory verses “To Sir Richard Fanshawe upon his Translation of Pastor Fido” (1648), Denham calls free translation “a new and nobler way” (Steiner 1975:63). Given the political significance of this method, it is important for Denham to translate a text in a genre that treats nobility, the epic, and refuse the French burlesques that debased Virgil’s aristocratic theme by treating social inferiors in the epic manner.

Denham’s intention to enlist translation in a royalist cultural politics at home is visible both in his selection of the foreign text and in the discursive strategies he adopted in his version. The choice to translate Virgil’s Aeneid in early modern England could easily evoke Geoffrey of Monmouth’s legend that Brute, the grandson of Aeneas, founded Britain and became the first in a succession of British monarchs. Although this like the Arthurian legends was losing credibility among historians and antiquarians, the matter of Troy continued to be the cultural support of a strong nationalism, and it was repeatedly revised from different and often conflicting ideological standpoints in a wide range of texts—from William Camden’s Britannia (1586) to Jonson’s Speeches at Prince Henry’s Barriers (1609) to Thomas Heywood’s Life of Merlin (1641).[3] The early Stuart kings were often given a Trojan genealogy. Anthony Munday’s contribution to the royal progress through London, The Triumphs of Re-united Britannia (1605), referred to James I as “our second Brute”; Heywood described his narrative as “a Chronographicall History of all the Kings and memorable passages of this kingdom, from Brute to the Reigne of our Royall Soveraigne King Charles” (Parsons 1929:403, 407). In the political debates during the Interregnum, a Trojan genealogy could be used to justify both representative government and absolute monarchy. In 1655, the parliamentarian polemicist William Prynne interpreted the significance of the legend as “1. A Warre to shake off Slavery, and recover publick Liberty. 2. A kinde of Generall Parliamentary Councell summoned by Brute”; whereas in a legal commentary published in 1663 Edward Waterhouse argued that Brute “by his consent to reward the valour and fidelity of his Companions” instituted laws “both touching his Royal Prerogative, and their civil Security in life, member, goods and Lawes” (Jones 1944:401, 403).

Denham’s own appropriation of the Brute legend in Coopers Hill swells with patriotic fervor, but it also possesses the awareness that the Trojan genealogy is a legend, increasingly under attack yet able {52} to function in cultural political struggles, and even, somewhat contradictorily, true. In a passage that reflects on the vista of London and environs, Denham writes that “The Gods great Mother,” Cybele,

… cannot boast
Amongst that numerous, and Celestiall hoast,
More Hero’s than can Windsor, nor doth Fames
Immortall booke record more noble names.
Not to look back so far, to whom this Ile
Owes the first Glory of so brave a pile,
Whether to Caesar, Albanact, or Brute,
The Brittish Arthur, or the Danish Knute,
(Though this of old no lesse contest did move,
Than when for Homers birth seven Cities strove)
[…]
But whosoere it was, Nature design’d
First a brave place, and then as brave a minde.

(Denham 1969:67)