Translation as a metaphor for salvation : eighteenth century English versions of Dante's Commedia

Abstract

Any student of the ways in which English artists appropriated Dante for their own purposes ends up asking himself the question: Why was it that Dante so obsessed first the Romantics, and then even more the Victorians, and later many of the Moderns? At least part of the answer is that, throughout this period, Dante has stood in the centre of English literature and culture, not only as a historical figure and a great artist, but also a fictional character - the protagonist of his own poem. He was, therefore, real but also fictional, and further, because of the nature of his fiction, he could be seen either as almost divine or, alternatively, as demonic. He thus became a myth, which could embody many of the values of English culture, and transform them. This process, by which Dante assumes and transforms a set of native values, is well illustrated in the first flourishing of interest in Dante, in the eighteenth century. The primary aim of this paper is to shed some light onto the process by which Dante became a catalyst in the transmission and transformation of certain values in English literature. This process occurred mainly through translations into English from the Commedia. My secondary aim here is to illustrate the function which translation assumes in providing a new emerging literary tradition with a model, which is read and interpreted in various ways.