Cornell University Press Translations of Chaucer and Virgil: Foundations of Transcendental Philosophy (Wissenschaftslehre) Nova Methodo (1796-99) (The Cornell Wordsworth)

William Wordsworth's two most extensive translation projects were his modernization of selected poems by Chaucer and his unfinished translation of Virgil's "Aeneid". Bruce E. Graver offers the texts, a complete account of their genesis and publication, a discussion of Wordsworth's practice as a translator. Graver's reading of the "Aeneid" corrects hundreds of substantive errors in the published texts of the translation. Unlike other volumes in the Cornell Wordsworth series, this one focuses on a particular kind of poetical work, translation. Like others, it includes reading texts with full critical apparatuses, photographic reproductions and transcriptions of manuscripts, as well as Graver's own introduction and notes which amount to a critical monograph on Wordsworth and translation. Graver suggests that both translation projects were self-conscious attempts on Wordsworth's part to compete with John Dryden, the pre-eminent English translator. He supplies evidence for a major reassessment of Wordsworth's attitudes toward Dryden and, indirectly, of the relationship of Wordsworth's poetry to British neoclassicism. Graver believes Wordsworth's scholarly abilities were much greater than commonly supposed, and that his translations will interest classicists, mediaevalists and 18th-century scholars, as well as romanticists. Review "Like all the other volumes in the superb 'Cornell Wordsworth,' this one provides reading texts of the works involved, a generous selection of photographic manuscript facsimiles with indispensable transcriptions, and a richly detailed critical apparatus. Graver's lengthy introductions to the Chaucer and Virgil sections add significantly to the reader's understanding of Wordsworth's ideals as a translator and his relation to the past. . . . Libraries will want to acquire this title . . . because there is much here to engage the attention of Chaucer and Latin students, upper-level English majors and graduate students with a particular focus on Romanticism, or, indeed, anyone with a serious interest in translation and the creative process."―Choice "Bruce E. Graver's edition of Translations of Chaucer and Virgil by William Wordsworth will be of considerable interest to Chaucerians. Graver gives a full account of the textual history of Wordsworth's modernizations. . . The reader is able to trace both composition and the revisions, and to perceive the extent of Wordsworth's respect for the medieval poet's idiom and diction. . . .The scholarship..will generally advance the study of Chaucer's reception in the post-medieval era."―Valerie Allen and Margaret Connolly, The Year's Work in English Studies "There are further rewards for attending to this translation, for it includes many of the passages that had already been important to Wordsworth's published poetry, most of all to The Excursion. . . . Perhaps most important of all, these findings and this volume should remind us that the boy who labored over his exercises at Hawkshead School never entirely forgot his lessons, and that the list of formative books famously acknowledged in The Prelude does not begin to exhaust the tributaries of his stream of knowledge."―David Simpson, The Wordsworth Circle About the Author Sally Bushell is Lecturer in English Literature, Director of Graduate Studies, and Co-Director of The Wordsworth Centre at Lancaster University. She is the author of Re-Reading The Excursion. James A. Butler is Professor of English at La Salle University. He is the editor of The Ruined Cottage and The Pedlar and Lyrical Ballads and Other Poems, 1797-1800, also in the Cornell Wordsworth. Michael Jaye has retired as Professor of English at Rutgers University. David García is Associate Provost of Ithaca College.