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COPYRIGHT 2005 Modern Humanities Research Association
Sir John Harington's translation of the Orlando furioso, first published in 1591, despite its overall fidelity, clearly reflects in key ways the age in which it was produced, in particular a creative interaction with and intervention in the text of the original. That Harington significantly abbreviated the text of the Orlando furioso is well known; what has not been closely studied is how he does so and the extent to which his modifications are not linguistically but culturally motivated. A close reading reveals changes designed to take account of differing cultural, political, and ideological factors between early sixteenth-century Ferrara and Elizabethan England. This article examines some of the strategies used by Harington in adapting the geographical, political, and religious perspectives of the Furioso to his English audience.
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Chi puo contar l'esercito chemosso Questo di contra Carlo ha 'l re Agramante, Contera ancora in su l'ombroso dosso Del silvoso Apennin tutte le piante; Dira quante onde, quando e ilmar piu grosso, Bagnano i piedi al Mauritano Atlante. (Orlando furioso, xiv. 99) He that would take upon him to declare Of Agramantas host the certaine number That to destroy this Citie did prepare Shall seeme himselfe as frutelessly to cumber As if he told what flowres in Hyble are What fish in sea, what water drops in Humber. (Harington's translation, xiv. 87) (1)
You do not need to know very much Italian or very much European geography to know that Hyble is not a translation of Apennin(i) and that the Humber does not wash the shores of Morocco. But it would be wrong (as well as ridiculous) to conclude as a result that Harington's knowledge of the Italian language and Mediterranean geography was seriously lacking. A line-by-line examination of Harington's translation reveals on the contrary that his knowledge of Italian is excellent and his rendering of Ariosto's stanzas often both wonderfully precise and sensitive to tone. (2) But, as it is the purpose of this discussion to show, Harington has a much more ample approach to the translation of the Orlando furioso than the merely linguistic, and one that above all demonstrates a sensitivity both to his audience's knowledge and experience and to the environment, cultural, political, and religious, in which he and they lived.
Sir John Harington's translation of the Orlando furioso, published in 1591, was the first attempt to cast Ariosto's masterpiece into English, but not of course the last. (3) Modern translators have tended to concentrate on the problems posed in turning Ariosto's metre and rhyme into effective English while not departing from the precise words and phrases. (4) They also rely, usually, on the modern apparatus of footnotes, introduction, and index, by which they avoid the need to consider whether their English readers will understand Ariosto's many allusions and react as the original Italian audience would have done. (5) By this very reliance on academic norms, however, they significantly affect the reader's experience of and reactions to the text, turning it into an object of study rather than of relaxation and entertainment. If one adds to that the fact that narrative poetry is an unfamiliar genre to most modern readers, one encountered only in the confines of school and university in most cultures, it is clear that a modern translation, however linguistically faithful, is in fact at a considerable distance from the original.
These modern preoccupations trouble Harington scarcely at all. Narrative poetry was still a lively contemporary genre in Elizabethan England, as it had been in English literature from the early Middle Ages. Its continuing appeal, in particular in the court milieu within which Harington was working, is evidenced by Spenser's virtually contemporary composition, The Faerie Queene. (6) Nor do metre and rhyme trouble Harington, who displays, throughout the long work, a superb facility for composing ottava rima, and conveying the many different emotional tones in Ariosto's stanzas. The problem for Harington, to which the reference to Spenser should alert us, is one of content and milieu, of time and place, politics, religion, and culture. The publishing world in which he was operating did not normally presuppose footnotes, nor, for translations, an introduction, commentary, or index. (7) It follows, therefore, that if Harington's audience wanted to understand Ariosto's cultural and other references, they expected to do so immediately and without critical support. As we have suggested, this is in some respects an advantage, erecting no barriers between reader and text, but successfully resolving the problems it poses is not a simple matter. (8) As previous editors have noted, (9) and as every reader can see at a glance, Harington's translation is considerably shorter than Ariosto's original and it is therefore easy to assume that Harington's principal approach to solving the dilemma posed by problematic and unfamiliar content is simply to omit, to cut and pass on. Not so: Harington's abbreviations are generally made for quite different reasons. His approach to cultural and content matters thus merits investigation. (10)
The principal frames of reference in Ariosto's poem which Harington has to address in presenting the work for an audience in Elizabethan England are four: geographical allusions; religious and ecclesiastical matters; politics and patrons; and finally cultural allusions both contemporary and literary/ historical. As my title indicates, I shall concentrate here mainly on the first two of these, making only brief allusions towards the end to the other two topics. In addressing these topics, Harington must also consider the ambivalent nature of the religious settlement in England, the shifting political alliances of his own day and country, the varying levels of knowledge of Italy, the Italian language, and the classical revival among his audience, and the uncertain temper of his patron and godmother, Elizabeth I, herself a fluent linguist and a highly educated scholar. In handling all these issues Harington demonstrates a playful versatility worthy of Ariosto himself, producing a highly readable version for the ordinary reader, but constantly outwitting the expectations of the scholar comparing his version with Ariosto's original. (11)
Let us return now to the opening quotation and the question of geography. Ariosto's text here is based on comparisons to the Apennines and the shores around Morocco, both items familiar to his Italian audience, from direct experience and, in the case of Morocco, trade links and the recent voyages of exploration into the Atlantic. Neither of these is an obvious basis of comparison for Harington in Elizabethan England. Voyages west from Britain did not go near Morocco, and the Apennines were unlikely to be familiar to most of his audience. In their place he produces alternative solutions derived, however, from two distinct sources. The waters off Morocco are replaced by a geographical reference much more familiar to Harington's readers, namely the great estuary of the Humber river in east Yorkshire, beyond which lay the unruly region of Northumbria and the Borders, a buffer zone against the marauding and hostile Scots, just as Morocco to an Italian audience might have constituted a potentially threatening territory, a buffer zone against the marauding nomadic tribes of the Sahara. The 'translation' of the Apennines is handled quite differently. Far from seeking a parallel mountain range in Britain or one familiar to his readers, Harington inserts the reference to Hyble, the name of a place or places in Sicily famous for flowers and the production of honey. Though the Virgilian reference is likely to be obscure to readers in the twenty-first century, this was presumably not so for his contemporary readers, on whose much more extensive familiarity with classical authors and allusions Harington can readily depend. Here, in short, geography is replaced by a literary reference to which the cultivated Elizabethan audience would react. (12)
The stanza just analysed thus demonstrates two of Harington's strategies for coping with unfamiliar geographical references, but this does not by any means exhaust his inventiveness in this particular aspect of the poem. Two further techniques, used much more frequently, are abbreviation in lists of geographical references...
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