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The present article applies a recent approach concerning visibility and agency articulated by Mairi McLaughlin, Theo Hermans and Sharon Dean-Cox. It does so by making a case study of paratextual features of successive editions and translations of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History produced in late Quattrocento and Cinquecento Italy. The aim is to illuminate specific ways in which editors, translators or printers made themselves manifestly visible to readers, and asserted their agency by claiming different types of collaboration: synchronous (translator and printer working together on a new project), asynchronous (translator, editor or printer expressly acknowledging the work of an earlier translator or editor, whether perfunctorily or otherwise) or concealed (editors or translators availing themselves of earlier works by fellow scholars without acknowledgement). Asynchronous collaboration is an understudied aspect of Renaissance translation. This article is an attempt to fill this gap.
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