English Humanism and the Translation of Greek, c. 1450-1550

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Studies which consider the development of early English humanism, such as Rita Copeland's Oxford History of Classical Reception in English Literature, 800-1558 (OHCREL I), focus overwhelmingly on the reception of texts in Latin. Little pressure is put on Greek, aside from its being understood that Greek materials circulated in Latinised copies. Concentrating on the final century of OHCREL I's period of study, my project puts Greek rather than Latin at the centre of attention. How were classical Greek texts transmitted and translated (into both Latin and English) in late medieval and early modern England? Is there evidence to suggest that the reception and translation of Greek (rather than Latin) texts should be seen as part of a distinct tradition? In turn, what are the implications for understanding early Tudor literary culture more widely? My approach to these questions is informed heavily by translation studies and book history, analysing literary authors as much as their scribes or printers (who were often, in any case, one and the same person). Scholars in the field have already demonstrated that these methodological frameworks work well in tandem: developments in English humanism clearly went hand-in-hand with the development of translation strategies; in turn, translation depended closely on the manual copying of classical texts and on the production and distribution of such texts in print. My pairing of these methodologies, then, is not in itself new. However, my approach remains novel in two major respects. First, I apply these methodologies to texts - some canonical, and others which are yet to receive critical attention - which have not hitherto been analysed together. After a first chapter considering the scribal background to and perception of Greek in early to mid-fifteenth century England, subsequent chapters focus on John Skelton's translation of Diodorus Siculus's Bibliotheca historica, Thomas More's Utopia and Moriae Encomium, Thomas Linacre's translations of Galen (printed, using some Greek type, by John Siberch), and finally on a selection of English translations of Greek texts printed by Thomas Berthelet in the 1530s and 1540s. A conclusion looks ahead to the later sixteenth century, which witnessed increasing numbers of vernacular translations of Greek texts (and also, curiously, some translations made from Latin into Greek). Second, although my overarching focus remains on English literature, I analyse texts equally in Greek, Latin, and English. My reasoning behind this is that 'English literature' from 1450-1550 cannot adequately be analysed, or even adequately represented, by literature solely in English. My thesis, then, aims not only to offer new and much-needed perspectives on early English humanism and classical reception, but also to underscore the benefits of a genuinely polylingual approach to literature of this period.