Content area
Full Text
In the course of the sixteenth century, the status of translation, especially from other vernaculars, changed dramatically. What had been understood as the state of servile rendering of a pre-existing text turned into the very real possibility of the creation of a French version that, based now on the strength and beauty of French, might claim as much aesthetic merit, as much glory, as the original, even when that original was an Italian classic.
In the first half of the sixteenth century, translations were often the battlefield in a struggle where the French language took on Latin and Italian in hand-to-hand combat. Latin, once neutral, simply the language of learning, was increasingly associated with the Church or with the successor to Rome - the Empire - both perceived as antagonists of Gallican traditions. The centuries-old model of a translatio imperii et studii was based on the recognition of the mutability of human affairs: things change, and as a consequence, the center of power, as of learning, shifts in the course of human history. This view, however, is founded on the assumption, inherited from the Roman Imperium, that at any given time there is a single center of power or learning - or more clearly in the Roman model, a single center of power and learning. Another, competing paradigm, inherited from Italy, can be seen in France starting with the reign of François I (1515-47); it is henceforth clear that worldly power lies not in the hand of one but of several princes. Although the roots of this kind of challenge to the Ancients are clearly in Renaissance Italy, for Italians, the center was moving through time, not space, making it a family matter so to speak in a kind of implied continuum. From the Gallican worldview, the change to multiple centers carries an implicit challenge to the Roman/Italian hub, a challenge that takes on a nationalist charge, positing a potential locus of the triumph of French. Where the notion of translatio imperii went, so too did translatif» studii, as by 1530, French learning rivaled that of contemporary Italy and was recognized as surpassing it in Greek studies. François Berriot notes that the perceived connection between learning and power can be seen a century or...