Vergil ‘disrobed’: John Vicars’ ‘home-spun English gray-coat plain’ Aeneid (1632)

Abstract

This article puts the spotlight upon the neglected 1632 translation of the entire Aeneid by the poet, puritan, and parliamentarian John Vicars, which, as the first complete translation of the Aeneid by an Englishman, should be more prominent in literary history. The article’s central argument is that the neglect of Vicars’ translation was, both at the time and thereafter, a manifestation of the class warfare that has long pervaded English society. This argument complements the view expressed by other scholars that the dismissal of Vicars was grounded in his radical puritanism and anti-Catholicism. The article analyses the paratextual materials that introduce the translation, including the dedicatory epistle, the address to the reader, and the poems of endorsement, as well as the poem itself, for signs of class struggle. By offering a close textual analysis, it argues that it is far from obvious that the quality of Vicars’ version is inferior. It concludes that the patent early hostility towards Vicars is more closely related to the person of the translator than the qualities of the translation; specifically, it attributes the failure of Vicars’ translation to dislike for the translator’s extremely humble origins, alongside his unfashionable religious and political views.

Towards a Cultural Sociology of the Uses of Classical Literature: Deploying Literary Representations of Rome and the Romans in England between the 15th and 18th Centuries

“…This scholarly field operates at two levels simultaneously. In the first instance, it has led to investigations that have broadened and deepened understandings of: how receptions of classical texts have been influenced by various social factors, such as how social class has impinged on how particular texts and translations thereof have been created and interpreted [4] ; how certain kinds of imagery can have very long histories that are semi-autonomous of the social conditions of their representation and reproduction [5] ; how textual materials from the ancient world have been deployed in, and came to be constitutive of, systems of school and university education, especially but not only for social elites over the last several hundred years [6] , and how elite actors deployed ancient texts and archaeological findings to claim legitimacy for themselves as both historical inheritors of, and contemporary standard-bearers for, the glories of antique civilizations [7] .…”