| The 1590s saw an unprecedented and unsurpassed flowering of English translation and appropriation of the Italian romance epics of Boiardo's Orlando Innamorato (1495), Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1532), and Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata (1581), bookended by Sir John Harington's first full English translation of the Orlando Furioso in 1591 and ending with Edward Fairfax's first full English translation of Gerusalemme Liberata in 1600. No study has adequately accounted for this significant cultural assimilation of the Italian romance epic, and this dissertation will be its first comprehensive treatment. Using the latest developments in translation theory, this study explores how these translators contributed to the changing status of translation in the English Renaissance, how they manipulated their Italian source texts for their target culture's consumption, how they helped define Englishness and foreignness---constructing English nationhood and identity as effectively as original vernacular projects---and how they converted the competing energies of romance and epic from their Italian sources in a way that reflected and helped shape their historical milieu: the unstable environment of the Elizabethan fin-de-siecle.;KEYWORDS: English Renaissance, Translation, Italian Romance Epic, Ariosto, Tasso. |
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