Virgil’s English Translators

This book considers the writers who translated Virgil into English during the English civil wars, the Interregnum and the early years of the Stuart Restoration (c. 1636–c. 1661). It argues that these writers translated Virgil in order to display and interrogate their political loyalties, articulate personal responses to past traumas and express their hopes for the country’s future. All of Virgil’s English translators in this period were in some way associated with the royalist cause, but the political elements of their respective translations demonstrate that royalism itself was not a monolithic political standpoint and instead encompassed a wide variety of opinions regarding the policy of individual monarchs and the institution of monarchy.