Review Project

Publius Ovidius Naso wrote some of the most superlative poetry that Rome or the world has ever seen. He wrote in dactylic hexameter, copying the style that such epics as the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid written in, but instead doesn’t talk about heroes and prodigious deeds as in the epics mentioned before; rather he talks about love and jumps sporadically from story to story about the tales of the metamorphoses. Three authors, Arthur Golding, George Sandys, and John Dryden, took it upon themselves to translate the Latin texts into English so that readers everywhere would be able to enjoy the ancient literature. When ranked in order from most direct form of translation to the most indirect it would appear as John Dryden, Arthur Golding, and then George Sandy. John Dryden is the most direct and keeps most of Ovid’s substance the same in his translation. He does not take any of the modern world’s issues or other modernities and project it into the ancient poem where they do not fit or belong.
Dryden was born on August 9, 1631 and later attended Westminster and Trinity College where he obtained his BA and graduated at the top of his class. He wrote mock-heroics and satires that became very popular in England, but was eventually forced into recluse when he would not take an oath to the new government. It is at this time that Dryden translated the Metamorphoses by Ovid until his death on May 12, 1700. In his translation of the books, he translated the un-rhyming Latin and turned them into prose. Even though he did not keep the pure un-rhyming substance of Ovid’s works, he still kept the same directness that emulates Ovid’s reduction of words and precision. Dryden backed up his method of translation when he said, “I have not tied myself to a literal translation; but I have often admitted what I have judged necessary or not of dignity to appear in the company of better thoughts" (1). Dryden is merely taking the Latin from which Ovid wrote some of the most dramatic and eye catching literary art to date, and rewriting it into the way it would be understood today with the same dramatic tone that Ovid captured so many audiences in ancient Rome with. It is this method of keeping the substance from the original Latin, but translating it into a way that would capture audiences in today’s world as it did in Ovid’s that earns Dryden the top spot among the authors.
Arthur Golding was born in 1536 and was a man who had strong Puritan sympathies which often became entangled in his works. It is these strong Puritan sympathies that keep Golding out of the top spot. Golding almost kept true to the dactylic hexameter which uses close to 13 beats by using iambic heptameter which is 14 beats. By keeping close to the same number of beats (or feet) Golding is able to accomplish the true metric substance of Ovid’s poetry, but it is the rhyming once again that keeps this translation from keeping the true rendition of Ovid’s metamorphoses. His translation also introduced ancient “pagan” mythology to England and more importantly, arguably the best playwright of all time, William Shakespeare. It is because of the time frame that it is written in that also makes this old English hard to understand in modern times, which is another reason that it is in the number two spot. Arthur Golding also translated many other Latin works until he died around 1605.
George Sandys was born in 1578, educated in Oxford, and traveled around Europe and the Middle East until finally colonizing in Virginia. Sandys translations are very much tied in with his experiences of traveling, especially his last travel in Virginia. He includes many references in his translation to America, which takes away from the true substance of the original work and does not maintain its true validity. He also uses prose just as John Dryden did along with some old English like Arthur Golding, which makes it even harder to understand. With all of the mixed cons of the other authors, this wins Sandys the last spot in the rankings. The only thing that Sandys did well through his translation though, was perhaps provide the only copy of Latin mythology available in the Americas in a way that the colonists could relate to.

1) Dryden, John, and Keith Walker. John Dryden: the Major Works. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2003. Print.

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