PARTLY FOLKSY, SOMETIMES SMIRKING: A NEW TRANSLATION OF AUGUSTINE’S CONFESSIONS
Keywords:
Confessions, Latin, English translation, Sarah Ruden
Abstract
The translator and poet Sarah Ruden published her new and in someways quite original translation of Augustine’s Confessions in 2017.In a fighting introductory essay she explains her position which shecharacterises as maverick. She contrasts her own work against othertranslations, which she regards as more traditional. Ruden makesprovocative claims about the allegedly conventional interpretations,which, relative to hers she argues, can work to obscure rather thanconvey what the Bishop of Hippo intended his contemporaryaudience to understand. This essay forms a reflection on her claimsand sets some of her passages against the original Latin and those ofother modern English translators. While Ruden’s is a welcomecontribution to a well populated field of translations into modernlanguages, her claims and strategies are not found to be alwaysentirely judicious.
Published
2019-03-14
Issue
Section
Articles
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