English translations of the Divine Comedy
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[]
- ^ Gilbert F. Cunningham, "The Divine comedy in English: a critical biography 1782-1966". 2 vols., Barnes & Noble, NY; esp. v.2 pp.5-9
- ^ Charles Rogers (1782). The Inferno of Dante, Translated. London: J. Nichols.
- ^ Henry Francis Cary. Dante's Inferno. New York: Cassell Publishing Company.
- ^ David Johnston (1867). A Translation of Dante's Inferno. Bath.
- ^ Charles Eliot Norton (1920). The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri. Houghton Mifflin.
- ^ Josephine Balmer (1994-03-13). "BOOK REVIEW / The lost in translation: 'Hell' - Dante Alighieri". The Independent. Retrieved 2017-04-20.
- ^ 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.
- ^ https://www.graywolfpress.org/books/inferno-0[dead link]
External links[]
- Dante Alighieri: Divine Comedy. Ugolinomania - Early English Translations of the Ugolino Episode from Chaucer to Jennings at Academia.edu containing translations from Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1340s–1400), Jonathan Richardson (1665–1745), Thomas Gray (1716–1771), Giuseppe Marc'Antonio Baretti (1719–1789), Joseph Warton (1722–1800), Frederick Howard, 5th Earl of Carlisle (1748–1825), Thomas Warton (1728–1790), Charles Rogers (1711–1784), Henry Boyd (c. 1750–1832) and Henry Constantine Jennings (1731–1819).
- Divine Comedy
- Translations into English
- Translation-related lists