“My Own Worst Enemy”: Translating Hamartia in Sixteenth-Century Italy.

This article considers the ways in which Aristotle's notion of hamartia (άμάαρτíα) in the Poetics—the tragic fault that leads to the protagonist's downfall—was rendered in sixteenth-century translations and commentaries produced in Italy. While early Latin translations and commentaries initially tra...

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Published in:Renaissance & Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme Vol. 41; no. 4; pp. 9 - 43
Main Author: BRAZEAU, BRYAN
Format: Article
Published: Iter Canada 2018
Subjects:
Online Access:View this record in EBSCOhost
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        atl: “My Own Worst Enemy”: Translating Hamartia in Sixteenth-Century Italy.
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        au: BRAZEAU, BRYAN
        affil: The University of Warwick.
      su:
        Translating & interpreting -- History
        Hamartia
        Poetics (Book : Aristotle)
        Aristotle, 384-322 B.C.
        Translating errors
        Philosophy of translating & interpreting
        Italian history -- 16th century
        Counter-Reformation
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        subj:
          Translating & interpreting -- History
          Hamartia
          Poetics (Book : Aristotle)
          Aristotle, 384-322 B.C.
          Translating errors
          Philosophy of translating & interpreting
          Italian history -- 16th century
          Counter-Reformation
      ab:
        This article considers the ways in which Aristotle's notion of hamartia (άμάαρτíα) in the Poetics—the tragic fault that leads to the protagonist's downfall—was rendered in sixteenth-century translations and commentaries produced in Italy. While early Latin translations and commentaries initially translated the term as error, mid-Cinquecento literary critics and theorists frequently used a term that implied sin: peccatum/peccato. Was this linguistic choice among sixteenth-century translators indicative of a broader attempt to Christianize the Poetics? While there were significant attempts on the part of translators and commentators to moralize the Poetics, this study of how hamartia was translated suggests that such interpretations were not Counter-Reformation distortions o f Aristotle’s Poetics but rather part of a broader program of cultural translation—expressing the linguistic influence of a religious public, but not necessarily a moralizing interpretation—domesticating the Greek philosopher for an early modern Christian audience.
        Cet article considère les façons dont Thamartia (àpapria) aristotélicienne—la faute tragique qui déclenche la chute du protagoniste—a été rendue dans les traductions et les commentaires de la Poétique produits en Italie au seizième siècle. Alors que les premières traductions et commentaires en latin, traduisaient le terme par error, dès le milieu du siècle on emploie fréquemment peccatum / peccato, un terme qui dénote le péché. Ce choix linguistique révèle-t-il un effort en vue d ’imposer une interprétation chrétienne de la Poétique? Certes, il y a eu d ’importantes tentatives de moralisation de la Poétique au seizième siècle, mais cette étude montre que ces manières de traduire /’hamartia résultent d ’un effort pour proposer une traduction du philosophe grec accessible au public chrétien de la Renaissance que d ’une distorsion du texte induite par la Contre-Réforme.
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    language: English
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