Adrián Martín Izquierdo

2022-2023

François Chevalier fellow

Baruch College, City University of New York

Transnational Argenis and Its Progeny: Printers, Translators and Reader

Adrián Izquierdo is an Assistant Professor in the English Department of Baruch College. He holds a Ph.D. from The Graduate Center, The City University of New York, and has been a fellow at the Leon Levy Center for Biography (New York), the Casa Velázquez (Madrid) and the Folger Institute (Washington DC).

His research interests revolve around the translation of texts and ideas in Renaissance culture, and in today’s globalized world. His book, Pierre Matthieu en España. Biografía, política y traducción en el Siglo de Oro (Iberoamericana-Vervuert, 2019) explores the role of translation in the development of the genre of political biography in 17th centuy France and Spain and reconstructs the intricate web of connections established among early modern writers and translators to probe into the political landscape of their times.

As a member of Pólemos, a digital humanities research group based at La Sorbonne University directed by Mercedes Blanco, he has completed the critical edition of the first biographies of Luis de Góngora for their digital repository. He is also the Director of the Multilingual Translation Minor at Baruch College.

The proposed project is part of a larger study concerned with multilingualism and translation in early modern Europe. Transnational Argenis and Its Progeny: Printers, Translators and Readers approaches the impact of John Barclay’s bestseller Latin romance Argenis from the perspective of translation studies and book history.

Published in Paris in 1621, Argenis saw over fifty editions in the 17th century and was translated into most European languages. It became a widely read roman à clef on the nature of kingship, tyranny and reason of state, and a fundamental link in the development of prose fiction. This project seeks, on the one hand, to produce a transnational translation history of Argenis that sheds light on its reception across the Republic of Letters via its Latin editions and vernacular translations and adaptations. On the other, it interrogates the marginalia inscribed by readers in the extant copies of the book that attest to a readership interested in its political messages. Drawing together all these elements, our goal is to produce a set of interconnected micro-translation histories that highlights the transformative role of translation as a transnational phenomenon in early modern culture.

- 2022. “J’en suis l’architecte’ Juste Lipse, Pierre Matthieu et la construction du discours historiographique et politique à la Renaissance,” in Rafaèle Audoubert (ed.), Plurivocalité et polyphonies: une voie vers la modernité?, Paris, Classiques Garnier, pp. 143-168.

- 2019. Pierre Matthieu en España. Biografía, política y traducción en el Siglo de Oro, Madrid/Frankfurt am Main, Iberoamericana / Vervuert.

- 2019. “Elizabeth Tudor, the Elephant and the Mirroring Cases of the Earl of Essex and the Duke of Biron,” in Eduardo Olid-Guerrero & Esther Fernández (eds.), The Image of Elizabeth I in Early Modern Spain, Nebraska, Nebraska University Press, pp. 313-343.




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