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

考虑早期英国人文主义发展的研究，如丽塔·科普兰（Rita Copeland）的《牛津英语文学经典接受史，800-1558》（OHCREL I），绝大多数集中在拉丁语文本的接受上。希腊文几乎没有受到什么压力，除了人们知道希腊文的材料以拉丁化的形式流传。我的项目专注于OHCREL I研究时期的最后一个世纪，把希腊语而不是拉丁语作为关注的中心。在中世纪晚期和现代早期的英格兰，古典希腊文本是如何传播和翻译（成拉丁语和英语）的？是否有证据表明希腊文（而非拉丁文）文本的接受和翻译应该被视为一个独特传统的一部分？反过来，这对更广泛地理解都铎早期文学文化有什么影响？我对这些问题的研究在很大程度上依赖于翻译研究和书籍历史，分析文学作者和他们的抄写员或印刷者（在任何情况下，他们通常是同一个人）。该领域的学者们已经证明，这些方法论框架可以很好地协同工作：英语人文主义的发展显然与翻译策略的发展密切相关；反过来，翻译在很大程度上依赖于手工复制经典文本，以及这些文本的印刷和发行。因此，我对这些方法的配对本身并不新鲜。然而，我的方法在两个主要方面仍然新颖。首先，我将这些方法应用于文本——一些是经典的，另一些是尚未得到批判性关注的——这些文本迄今尚未被一起分析。在第一章考虑了15世纪早期到中期英国对希腊语的抄写背景和看法之后，随后的章节集中在约翰·斯凯尔顿翻译的迪奥多罗斯·西库鲁斯的《历史文献》，托马斯·莫尔的《乌托邦》和《莫里埃·恩科米姆》，托马斯·利纳克翻译的《盖伦》（由约翰·西比奇印刷，使用一些希腊字体），最后是托马斯·贝特莱在1530年代和1540年代印刷的希腊文本的英文翻译。结论部分展望了16世纪后期，当时希腊文本的方言译本越来越多（奇怪的是，还有一些从拉丁语翻译成希腊语的译本）。其次，尽管我的主要关注点仍然是英国文学，但我同样分析希腊语、拉丁语和英语的文本。我的理由是，从1450年到1550年的“英国文学”不能被充分地分析，甚至不能被充分地代表，仅仅是英语文学。因此，我的论文不仅旨在为早期英国人文主义和古典文学的接受提供新的和急需的视角，而且还强调了这一时期真正的多语言文学方法的好处。

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.