The Babel of Knowledge: Humanist sensibilities and the vernacular translation of Greek history in the French Renaissance. (Volumes I and II).

Abstract

The main intent of this study is to understand the perceptions and attitudes of translators who took on the responsibility of transmitting ancient knowledge to a vernacular-reading public in the Renaissance. Vernacular translators of the Renaissance participated in the movement to mold vernacular expression and at the same time gave an opportunity for non-elite (but upwardly mobile) parts of society to reflect on received knowledge of history and nature. Even with the invention of printing, there was no guarantee that such knowledge would be dispersed in so short a time. By coming in contact with ancient knowledge, particularly in a form or a sense purported to be close to the original, readers in various vernaculars were presented with alternative, and often conflicting, ways of thinking about and discussing their world; thus, the Babel of Knowledge. Humanist sensibilities to language, rhetoric, history, and the relationship of text and context, as well as humanist attempts to establish more rhetorical and philological interpretive procedures, were adapted for use by sixteenth-century vernacular translators. The humanist understanding of languages as historical and malleable by human will and use, opened the way for some vernacular writers who concluded that their native language could and should be used for more learned discourse. With the understanding that Romans had made Latin more copious and expressive by capturing Greek knowledge and had achieved new cultural heights thereby, vernacular translators and writers hoped to emulate the Roman example. Greek history was a completely new aspect of the ancient corpus being introduced to Renaissance readers. Reflection on Greek experience contributed to the developing self-consciousness concerning native language, laws, institutions, and cultural expression that in the sixteenth century manifested itself as a moral imperative. Translators' prefaces and other writings reveal the changing attitudes toward language, history, culture, and knowledge.