(Download) "Cristobal Suarez de Figueroa and Isabel Correa: Competing Translators of Battista Guarini's Il Pastor Fido." by Romance Notes " Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Cristobal Suarez de Figueroa and Isabel Correa: Competing Translators of Battista Guarini's Il Pastor Fido.
- Author : Romance Notes
- Release Date : January 22, 2005
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 198 KB
Description
IN 1609 Cristobal Suarez de Figueroa, a soldier and nobleman at the court of Phillip III, published a translation of Battista Guarini's Il Pastor Fido that, in its poetic economy and classical style, aimed to be a definitive translation of the Italian pastoral drama. Very popular and well received, Figueroa's translation is highly praised in Part II of the Quixote, "[pues] felizmente pone en duda cual es la traduccion o cual el original" (2: 519-20). Eighty five years later, in 1694, Isabel Correa, a Jewish exconversa living in Amsterdam, published a second Spanish translation of Guarini's masterpiece, an effort that she intended would fully surpass the source text as well as Figueroa's translation. Correa's text poses a challenge to Guarini's and Figueroa's canonical works in several important ways. The dedication and prologue, full of wit and rhetorical inventiveness, openly question the supremacy of Figueroa's translation. These preliminary texts present Correa's feminine perspective as an advantage that allows the author to trump all previous efforts. Moreover, Correa's translation is imbued with Baroque linguistic exuberance and agudeza, which together with numerous reflexiones or meditations added to the text, notably transform the experience of reading El pastor Fido. From Amsterdam and as a Jewish woman writer, Correa asked the Spanish literary community, both in Amsterdam and in Spain, to regard her El pastor Fido as a new jewel in the pastoral genre. It is my intent in this note to give credence to Correa's claim and briefly compare the politics and mechanics of these two competing translations. (1) In spite of the popularity of Il Pastor Fido throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, modern critical attention to both Figueroa's and Correa's translation has been slight. Figueroa's translation has elicited little interest, taking a back seat to his pastoral novel, La constante Amarilis, and his social and political commentary in El pasajero. Even worse, on the rare previous occasions in which Correa's work has received critical consideration, her translation has routinely been derided. Correa's gender, social circumstance, and the lack of deference for Figueroa in her prologue loom as negative factors in the assessment of her work. For instance, J.P. Wickersham Crawford's study of Figueroa's translation is revealing in its quick dismissal of Correa. Regarding Figueroa, the critic asserts: