Chapter 3 - The Economics of Translating Virgil

Summary

The chapter explores the economics of translating Virgil, examining the role of patrons, printers, publishing houses and presses. I first explore the relationships of translators with their patrons, publishers and printers, in France, Italy and Britain during the first two centuries of the print era. I reveal the tension between the desire to satisfy the elite’s need for exclusive badges of culture and the impulse to extend the vernacularization of Virgil by producing accessible translations for less educated readers. I investigate the power relations involved in initiating or commissioning translations, with examples from Cinquecento Italy, and the funding of expensive folio editions in France and England. In Victorian England, translations published in low-priced series of books, including Everyman’s Library, flourish alongside ambitious luxury productions. The chapter concludes with a study of Virgil’s works in the Penguin Classics series in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.