Chapter 9. ‘‘With All Due Reverence and Respect to the Word of God’’: Aphra Behn as Skeptical Reader of the Bible and Critical Translator of Fontenelle

Ferguson, Margaret W.

doi:10.9783/9780812205985.199

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“…21 The ways in which the authors' texts overlap is clearer if chronology is followed, so Wilkins's mid-century perspective will be first assessed, before turning to Behn's engagement with what Margaret Ferguson has called the "potentially dangerous matters of religion and science" circulating in the late seventeenth century. 22 Just as Behn with some ease dispatched the figurative language in Isaiah and the Psalm, so Wilkins understood that the Bible need not be taken literally. He demonstrated this when assessing how the Moabites (2 Kings 3: 22) described the colour of the sea being "as red as blood"; he discounted their inference that there was blood in the water, and identified the cause: "[the sun's low] beames make the waters appeare very red".…”

Section: I) Heliocentrism: Behn's Interpretation Of Psalm 19 Isaiah 3...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Bible and its Exegesis in Aphra Behn's “An Essay on Translated Prose” (1688)

Gill

2020

Women's Writing

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By assessing Aphra Behn's preface to Bernard de Fontenelle's Entretiens sur la pluralité des mondes, which was published as "An Essay on Translated Prose" (1688), this article marks a subtle but profound shift in the understanding of how Behn engaged with the Bible. Firstly, it establishes that Behn drew on material that fused scientific theory and Bible analysis, specifically John Wilkins's A Discourse Concerning a New Planet (1640). Secondly, it explores how Behn deployed biblical quotation, and paratext, and explains the significance of the edition that she consulted. Thirdly, it proposes that Behn accessed Bible Commentaries and "annotations" that were published widely throughout the seventeenth century as scholarly guides to scripture's meaning. This article thereby situates Behn in relation to the resources and thinkers that facilitated her as she produced biblical exegesis.

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Section: I) Heliocentrism: Behn's Interpretation Of Psalm 19 Isaiah 3...mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Bible and its Exegesis in Aphra Behn's “An Essay on Translated Prose” (1688)

Gill

2020

Women's Writing

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“…Behn not only translated La Rochefoucauld's epigrammatic maxims, which challenge conventional Christian morality in their treatment of self‐love and self‐interest ( Reflections on Morality, or Seneca Unmasqued , 1685); she also translated Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle's astronomical dialog, Entretiens sur la Pluralité des Mondes as A Discovery of New Worlds (1688 ). She used her translator's preface, “An Essay on Prose Translation,” to critique aspects of the original text (and the French language) with an unusual lack of deference toward the author; she also used her essay to make her own argument that the Bible should be translated – and interpreted – in a way that supports a Copernican view of the universe rather than the Ptolemaic view held by both Roman Catholic and Protestant (Church of England) authorities (Ferguson, ‘With All Due Reverence’) . In addition , she was the sole female contributor to a volume of translations of Ovid's Heroides compiled by Dryden in 1680, entitled Ovid's Epistles, Translated by Several Hands .…”

Section: Women's Literacy In Foreign Languagesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Women's Literacies and Social Hierarchy in Early Modern England

Ferguson

Suzuki

2015

Literature Compass

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This article argues for a historically contextualized investigation of literacy that attends to early modern literacies in different and mixed media and to literacy as a complex set of practices and theories. Early modern literacy, for example, does not necessarily include both reading and writing: the criterion of measuring literacy by the signature is biased against women of various ranks as well as against poor men. Therefore, literacy rates of women should not be measured solely by means of their ability to sign their names but also by evidence provided by books dedicated to noblewomen or addressed to women of different ranks. A more expansive conception of authorship that includes anonymously, pseudonymously, and collectively written documents, as well as translations, can give a more accurate idea of the literacy of women of different social groups. Future research on literacy will be advanced by the discovery of hitherto unknown writings, and scholars will need to work on cultural documents of many kinds to gather evidence on the so-called "unlettered women," and thereby to focus our attention on the negatively charged side of the literacy/illiteracy dyad.for the negative part of the dyad "literate/illiterate"; the expression litteras (ne)scire, "not to know letters," may refer to lack of culture rather than to illiteracy in the narrow sense (Harris 5).Although Adam Fox argues that "by the end of the 14th century the modern usages [of literacy], denoting basic ability to read and write in the vernacular, were becoming widespread," and that "[i]n the 16th century they were normal" (46; our emphasis), he offers no evidence for this claim that literacy was considered to be the ability both to read and write by the 16th century. In fact, reading and writing skills were not taught together, either in schools or homes, and this fact has significant consequences for students of early modern literacy. 2 Children in England learned to read religious textsand recite catechismsseveral years before they learned to write, if they learned the latter (expensive) skill at all. 3 Many children, especially girls and lower-class boys, did not stay in school long enough to embark on writing instruction. Moreover, in some early modern primary schools, curricula were differentiated in ways that ref lected the views of pedagogical authorities such as Thomas Salter, who advised women to work with the "distaffe, and Spindle, Nedle and Thimble" rather than develop "the skill of well using a penne" (Trill 1). 4 Fox's view of literacy as "widespread" in England by the 16th century is countered by the research of many scholars and particularly by the statistics compiled by David Cressy and others who use the "signature method" of measuring literacy rates across the population. Cressy, who shares R. S. Schofield's view that the ability to sign one's name on a document constitutes an imperfect but nonetheless the best available measure of literacy (see Schofield 319), concludes from his research on signed documents, including business a...

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Chapter 9. ‘‘With All Due Reverence and Respect to the Word of God’’: Aphra Behn as Skeptical Reader of the Bible and Critical Translator of Fontenelle

Cited by 2 publications

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The Bible and its Exegesis in Aphra Behn's “An Essay on Translated Prose” (1688)

The Bible and its Exegesis in Aphra Behn's “An Essay on Translated Prose” (1688)

Women's Literacies and Social Hierarchy in Early Modern England

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