Acquisition through translation: the rise of the vernaculars in early modern Europe (Padova, 2-4 May 2017) (original) (raw)

Early modern Europe develops its vernacular national literatures through a process of acquisition and translation: the emergence of the standard modern languages entails a competition with the dominant Latin culture, which remains the prevalent medium for the language of science, theology and philology until at least the eighteenth century. In this process, translation plays a very special role: in a number of significant instances we can read, in the widely disseminated process of translation, a policy of acquisition of classical – and by definition authoritative – texts that contribute to the building of an intellectual library for the emerging nation. At the same time, the transmission of ideas and texts across Europe constructed a diasporic and transnational culture: the emerging vernacular cultures acquired not only the classical Latin models, incorporating them in their own intellectual libraries, but turned their attention also to contemporary, or near-contemporary, vernacular texts, conferring them, through the act of translation, the status of classics. The present conference investigates all aspects of this phenomenon of cultural politics in Early Modern Europe, with particular attention to the exchange and cultural connections in Western Europe between the invention of printing and 1650.

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