English Translations from the Greek: A Bibliographical Survey — John Shaqi
English Translations from the Greek: A Bibliographical SurveyFoster, Finley Melville Kendall
General
English Translations from the Greek: A Bibliographical Survey
Foster, Finley Melville Kendall
Greek literature -- Translations into English -- Bibliography; Thesis (Ph. D.)
The nineteenth century, quantitatively at least, is the most important
period in the history of Greek translation, for more than half of the
total number of translations printed between 1484 and 1916 were published
during these years. As the chart indicates the great numerical advance
came after 1860, although the preceding sixty years had been far ahead of
the previous centuries in the work produced. The reasons suggested for
this great advance in the nineteenth century are: first, a new interest in
Greece itself; secondly, the rise of classical libraries and the
subsequent cheapness of translations; and thirdly a large output, mainly
in the latter part of the nineteenth century, of schoolboy helps.
The early part of the nineteenth century was a time of much interest in
Greece on the part of the English public. The travels of Edward Dodwell,
H. W. Williams, and William Gell, to say nothing of Lord Byron, made the
Greece of that day well known in England. Through all this time, from 1784
to 1818, William Mitford’s _History of Greece_ was proceeding in leisurely
installments. The immediate popularity of the work is but another evidence
of the widespread interest in Greece. I need hardly mention the stress
which was laid upon the classics in the educational system of the time,
for it is a well known fact. The emphasis which was placed upon Greek was
at least equal to that upon Latin. The Classical scholars of the period
such as C. J. Bloomfield, J. H. Monk, P. P. Dobree, and P. Elmsley spent
the major portion of their lives in carrying on the work of Porson and
editing Greek texts rather than Latin. The _Reviews_ from time to time
published articles on new classical books; and that the emphasis was on
Greek rather than Latin is shown by a survey of the classical reviews in
the _Edinburgh Review_ between 1802 and 1836: of a total of thirty‐nine
articles, twenty‐nine were on Greek books. All of these forces encouraged
a new interest in Greece and Greek literature, an interest which was not
so much the purely literary attitude of the century and a half which had
just passed, as a general interest on the part of the whole reading
public.
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