"That Famous Wit and Cavaleer of France": The English Translation of Cyrano de Bergerac in the 1650s
"That Famous Wit and Cavaleer of France": La traduction anglaise de Cyrano de Bergerac dans les années 1650
Résumé
This paper studies the English translations of two works by Cyrano de Bergerac that were published in quick succession in London during the Interregnum. While they manifest a keen interest in two French contemporary best-sellers and therefore the increasing commodification of literature, I will focus on the adaptation and naturalization of Cyrano's works in the polarized context of the late 1650s for a royalist readership. In 1656, Henry Herringman published Satyrical Characters and Handsome Description in Letters, Written to severall persons of Quality, an adaptation (by “a Person of Honour”) of Cyrano's Oeuvres diverses de Mr de Cyrano Bergerac (Paris: Charles de Sercy, 1654). In 1659, Humphrey Robinson published , Or the Government of the World in the Moon: A Comical History (London: Ptd by J. Cottrell, and to be sold by Humphrey Robinson), which is the first English translation, by Thomas Sydserf, of Cyrano's Histoire comique par Monsieur de Cyrano Bergerac, Contenant les Estats & Empires de la Lune (Paris: Charles de Sercy, 1657). This essay looks at the significance of the translation in the career of the two booksellers concerned, then studies the cavalier “packaging” (Baker, 152) of the two works, in particular through the selection and tailoring of information on the title-page, and the use of paratext. It argues that the heterodox dimension of Cyrano’s oeuvre is downplayed as he is read as “a Cavaleer of France.”
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