WELCOME.
Welcome to the Translating Greek tragedy in sixteenth-century Europe conference hosted by the University of Oxford. The conference will take place on the 14th December 2018.
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The conference is being supported by the University of Oxford, the Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama, St Hilda’s College, the Université de la Réunion and the research laboratory DIRE.
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This one-day symposium hosted by the APGRD (Archive of Performances of Greek and Roman Drama) is premised on the fact that understanding the early-modern reception of ancient tragedy is a cross-cultural, multilingual and collective effort. Its aim is to bring together researchers specialising in 16th-century translations of ancient Greek tragedies in Europe (starting with Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Germany, and England) and provide a platform to gather and exchange information on three different levels:
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Translations: source-text(s), translation strategies, publication, circulation and performances.
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Translators: training and proficiency in ancient Greek, economic situation (patronage, market for translations), religious, intellectual, political backdrop to the production of translations.
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Translation theories: early-modern translation practices and theories of translation; twentieth-century terminology.
The event will ideally be the first in a series spanning the early-modern period. Here are some of the questions that the first symposium seeks to address:
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The European big picture: what were the common European trends, in theory and/or practice in the early translations of Greek tragedy? How effective was the circulation of both source- and target-texts?
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Perceptions and representations: How were these early translations perceived? How did they influence performance and how did performance in turn impact translation practices? How was translating as a practice theorised and how do early-modern terminologies, in different languages, map on twenty-first-century notions (translation, adaptation, version, rewriting, rendering, etc.)?
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Intertextuality: What sort of influence did these translation theories and target-texts exert on European theatre in general, especially when compared to the reception of Seneca?
