Chapter 5 - Tudor Plutarch

Summary

Chapter 5 explores the distinct dynamics of Plutarch reception in England prior to the famous 1579–1603 translations of Thomas North (1535–1604). In England at this time, Plutarch’s work was read largely through a Ciceronian lens. I reflect on the vernacular translations of Plutarch’s moral essays by Thomas Wyatt (1503–1542), Thomas Elyot (1490–1546), Thomas Blundeville (1522–1606), Richard Taverner and Queen Elizabeth I (1533–1603) as well as explore the place of Plutarch in Thomas More’s Utopia (1516). I argue that prior to the translations of Thomas North, Plutarch was read predominantly in England as a thinker whose political insights were secondary to his moral ones. While the increasing precariousness of the English realm into the latter sixteenth century changed the tone of political thought, the English never read their Plutarch in the vernacular with the same attention to the nature of public office and the public realm in the way prevalent in France earlier in the century.