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Machiavelli in the British Isles: Two Early Modern Translations of The Prince. By ALESSANDRA PETRINA. (Anglo-Italian Renaissance Studies).

2011; Oxford University Press; Volume: 12; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/library/12.2.173

1744-8581

Sydney Anglo,

Early Modern Spanish Literature

Since the pioneering and much-plagiarized thesis of John Wesley Horrocks, Machiavelli in Tudor Political Opinion and Discussion (1908), early modern English translations of Machiavelli have only intermittently received scholarly attention — although there was a short burst of interest in the 1930s and 1940s with the work of Napoleone Orsini and Hardin Craig. Now, however, Alessandra Petrina's meticulous edition of two manuscript versions of The Prince — one Scottish, by the poet and diplomat William Fowler, and the other by an anonymous English writer — certainly gives them their due and, in some ways, rather more. Fowler's translation, which lacks Chapters 5–10 and the conclusion of Chapter 26, survives in the chaotic Hawthornden MS 2064 in Edinburgh and poses a number of editorial problems. The hand is clear enough, but the text is full of crossings-out, second thoughts, alternative verbal suggestions, and superscriptions — all of which have been transcribed and clearly reproduced, with full annotations, in this volume. Petrina demonstrates that Fowler's Italian was very defective and that he relied heavily upon Gaspard d'Auvergne's French version of The Prince, which had first appeared in 1553. She also examines the possibility that he had access to Silvestro Teglio's Latin version — first published in 1560 — but the evidence for this is slight and inconclusive. By contrast, the author of the other translation (Oxford, Queen's College, MS 251) used not only an Italian text, as printed by John ‘Machiavel’ Wolfe in 1584, but also Teglio's edition; and, where the versions did not agree, he was able to make ‘a well-informed decision, based on the general meaning of the passage’. The result is an altogether more expert and precise piece of work. Unfortunately, as so often in the history of ideas, there remains the problem of how to gauge the significance of such texts.