Gifting Translation in Early Modern England

Women Writers and the Politics of Authorship

Kirsten Inglis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2025
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781040771952
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism for Women Authors
• Index: History

Translation was a critical mode of discourse for early modern writers. Gifting Translation in Early Modern England: Women Writers and the Politics of Authorship examines the intersection of translation and the culture of gift-giving in early modern England, arguing that this intersection allowed women to subvert dominant modes of discourse through acts of linguistic and inter-semiotic translation and conventions of gifting. The book considers four early modern translators: Mary Bassett, Jane Lumley, Jane Seager, and Esther Inglis. These women negotiate the rhetorics of translation and gift-culture in order to articulate political and religious affiliations and beliefs in their carefully crafted manuscript gift-books. This book offers a critical lens through which to read early modern translations in relation to the materiality of early modern gift culture.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: ‘Transformance’: Renaissance Women’s Translation and the Performance of Gift Exchange
• 1 ‘Thys my poore labor to present’: Mary Bassett's Translation of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical History
• 2 ‘For the comodite of my countrie’: Nation, Gift, and Family in Lady Jane Lumley’s Tragedie of Iphigeneia
• 3 ‘Graced both with my pen and pencell’: Prophecy and Politics in Jane Seager’s Divine Prophecies of the Ten Sibills
• 4 ‘The fruits of my pen’: Esther Inglis's Translation of Georgette de Montenay's Emblemes ou Devises Chrestiennes
• Conclusion: ‘Shall I Apologize Translation?’
• General Bibliography
• Appendix 1: Table of Emblems and Dedicatees in Esther Inglis’s Cinquante Emblemes Chrestiens (1624)
• Index