English translations of the Divine Comedy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  (Redirected from )

The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri was translated into Latin, French, Spanish and other European languages well before it was first translated into English. In fact the first English translation was only completed in 1802, almost 500 years after Dante wrote his Italian original. The lack of English translations before this is due in part to Dante's Catholic views being distasteful, or at least uninteresting, to Protestant English audiences, who viewed such a Catholic theology, mixed with references to classical mythos, as heretical.

Since 1802, however, the Divine Comedy has been translated into English more times than it has into any other language, and new English translations continue to be published regularly, so that today English is the language with the most translations by far. A complete listing and criticism of all English translations of at least one of the three books (cantiche; singular: cantica) up until 1966 was made by Cunningham.[1] The table below summarises Cunningham's data with (incomplete) additions between 1966 and the present. Many more translations of individual cantos from the three cantiche exist, but these are too numerous to allow the compilation of a comprehensive list.

Publication date Name Nationality Parts translated Form Notes
1782 Charles Rogers UK Inferno[2] blank verse First translation of a full cantica into English
1785-1802 Henry Boyd UK Comedy rhymed 6-line stanzas First full translation of the Comedy in English.
1805-1814 Henry Francis Cary UK Comedy[3] blank verse Volume 20 in the Harvard Classics series.
1807 UK Inferno blank verse
1812 Joseph Hume UK Inferno blank verse one of the two 'worst' translations according to Cunningham
1833-1840 Ichabod Charles Wright UK Comedy rhymed 6-line stanzas
1843-1865 UK Comedy terza rima
1843-1893 Thomas William Parsons United States Comedy (incomplete) quatrains and irregular rhyme
1849 UK Inferno prose
1850 UK Comedy irregular rhyme one of the two 'worst' translations according to Cunningham
1851-1854 Charles Bagot Cayley UK Comedy terza rima
1852 UK Comedy prose
1854 UK Inferno terza rima
1854 Sir William Frederick Pollock UK Comedy blank
1859 UK Inferno irregular rhyme
1859-1866 UK Comedy terza rima
1862 UK Inferno blank
1862-1863 UK Comedy terza rima
1865 William Michael Rossetti UK Inferno blank
1865-1870 James Ford UK Comedy terza rima
1867 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow United States Comedy blank First complete American translation and one of the best translations according to Cunningham. Available online and at academia.edu.
1867-1868 David Johnston UK Comedy[4] blank
1877 Charles Tomlinson UK Inferno terza rima
1880-1892 Arthur John Butler UK Comedy prose
1881 Warburton Pike UK Inferno terza rima
1883 William Stratford Dugdale UK Purgatorio prose
1884 UK Inferno terza rima
1885 UK Comedy terza rima
1886-1887 Edward Hayes Plumptre UK Comedy terza rima
1887 UK Comedy terza rima
1888 United States Comedy rhymed stanzas
1889-1900 UK Comedy prose
1891-1892 Charles Eliot Norton United States Comedy[5] prose Translation used by Great Books of the Western World. Available online at Project Gutenberg.
1892-1915 Charles Lancelot Shadwell UK Purgatorio and Paradiso
1893 UK Inferno Spenserian stanzas
1893 UK Inferno prose
1895 UK Inferno terza rima
1898 Eugene Jacob Lee-Hamilton UK Inferno hendecasyllabic blank
1899 Philip Henry Wicksteed UK Paradiso prose
1899 UK Purgatorio octosyllabic terza rima
1899-1901 UK Purgatorio (incomplete: I-XXXI only) hendecasyllabic blank
1901 John Carpenter Garnier UK Inferno prose
1901 UK Purgatorio prose
1902 Edward Clarke Lowe UK Comedy blank
1903-1909 UK Comedy terza rima
1903-1911 Sir Samuel Walker Griffith UK Comedy hendecasyllabic blank
1904 UK Purgatorio and Paradiso rhymed quatrains
1904 Henry Fanshawe Tozer UK Comedy prose
1904 Marvin Richardson Vincent United States Inferno blank verse
1905 UK Purgatorio prose
1908 UK Paradiso blank
1910 UK Purgatorio blank
1911 UK Comedy terza rima
1914 UK Comedy blank verse
1915 UK Inferno blank
1915 Sir Samuel Griffith Australia
1915 United States Comedy blank
1918-1921 United States Comedy blank
1920 United States Inferno terza rima
1921 United States Comedy terza rima
1922 UK Inferno unrhymed amphiambics
1927 UK Comedy terza rima
1928-1931 United States (born in Italy) Comedy terza rima
1928-1954 Sydney Fowler Wright UK Inferno and Purgatorio irregularly rhymed decasyllables
1931 United States Comedy defective terza rima
1931 United States Inferno terza rima
1932-1935 UK Comedy terza rima
1933-1943 Laurence Binyon UK Comedy terza rima
1934-1940 Louis How United States Comedy terza rima
1938 UK Comedy blank verse
1939-1946 UK Comedy prose
1948 Lawrence Grant White United States Comedy blank verse
1948 United States Comedy hendecasyllabic terza rima
1948-1954 Thomas Goddard Bergin United States Comedy blank verse
1949-1953 Harry Morgan Ayres United States Comedy prose
1949-1962 Dorothy Leigh Sayers UK Comedy terza rima Penguin Classics edition. After Sayers' death in 1957, Paradiso XXI-XXXIII completed by Barbara Reynolds.
1952 UK Paradiso defective terza rima
1954 United States Comedy prose
1954-1970 John Ciardi United States Comedy defective terza rima Inferno recorded and released by Folkways Records in 1954.
1956 United States Comedy terza rima
1958 United States Comedy hendecasyllabic blank
1961 UK Inferno terza rima
1962 United States Comedy prose
1965 UK Comedy dodecasyllabic terza rima
1965 Italy Inferno blank
1967-2002 Mark Musa United States Comedy blank verse An alternative Penguin Classics version.
1970-1991 Charles S. Singleton United States Comedy prose Literal prose version with extensive commentary; 6 vols.
1980-1984 Allen Mandelbaum United States Comedy blank verse Available online alongside Longfellow as part of Columbia's Digital Dante.
1981 C. H. Sisson UK Comedy ? Oxford World's Classics
1994 UK Inferno ? Chatto & Windus[6]
1995 Robert Pinsky United States Inferno terza rima
1996 Peter Dale UK Comedy terza rima
1996-2007 Robert M. Durling United States Comedy prose Oxford University Press
1998 Elio Zappulla United States Inferno [7] blank verse (iambic pentameter) Random House
2000 W. S. Merwin United States Purgatorio ?
2000 A S Kline United States Comedy prose
2000-2007 United States Comedy blank verse Online as part of the Princeton Dante Project. Known for its extensive scholarly notes.[7]
2002 Ciaran Carson Ireland Inferno terza rima Granta Books
2002 Michael Palma United States Inferno terza rima
2002-2004 Anthony M. Esolen United States Comedy blank verse Modern Library Classics.
2006-2007 UK Comedy blank verse A third Penguin Classics version, replacing Musa's
2009-2017 Stanley Lombardo United States Comedy blank Hackett Classics
2010 Burton Raffel United States Comedy ?
2012 UK Comedy ?
2013-2021 Mary Jo Bang United States Inferno, Purgatorio ? Graywolf Press[8]
2013 Clive James Australia/UK Comedy quatrains Picador
2017 Peter Thornton United States Inferno blank verse Arcade Publishing
2018-2020 Alasdair Gray UK Comedy ? Canongate Books
2020-2021 David Macleod Black UK Purgatorio bilingual New York Review of Books

References[]

  1. ^ Gilbert F. Cunningham, "The Divine comedy in English: a critical biography 1782-1966". 2 vols., Barnes & Noble, NY; esp. v.2 pp.5-9
  2. ^ Charles Rogers (1782). The Inferno of Dante, Translated. London: J. Nichols.
  3. ^ Henry Francis Cary. Dante's Inferno. New York: Cassell Publishing Company.
  4. ^ David Johnston (1867). A Translation of Dante's Inferno. Bath.
  5. ^ Charles Eliot Norton (1920). The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Houghton Mifflin.
  6. ^ Josephine Balmer (1994-03-13). "BOOK REVIEW / The lost in translation: 'Hell' - Dante Alighieri". The Independent. Retrieved 2017-04-20.
  7. ^ a b Barbarese, J. T. (2009). Alighieri, Dante; Zappulla, Elio; Ciardi, John; Mandelbaum, Allen; Hollander, Robert; Hollander, Jean (eds.). "Four Translations of Dante's "Inferno"". The Sewanee Review. 117 (4): 647–655. ISSN 0037-3052. JSTOR 40542670.
  8. ^ https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/inferno-0[dead link]

External links[]

Retrieved from ""