The space in between. Creating meaning between Richard Fanshawe’s original and translated poetry

Abstract

This article offers a reading of the relationship between original and translated poetry in the work of the seventeenth‐century author, diplomat, and translator, Richard Fanshawe. It argues that the physical space between original and translated poetry published in the same volume becomes itself a site of signification. It focuses in particular on the original poem ‘On the Earle of Straffords Tryall’ and the translated sonnet ‘The Fall,’ and on the two examples of self‐translation ‘The Escuriall / In Aedes magnificas’ and ‘On His Majesties Great Shippe/ Ad eximiae magnitudinis Navem.’ The relationship between the two sets of poems can be better understood by taking into account their relative positions in the 1648 volume in which they were published, examining them both as independent pieces and as a unit, resulting in a new and extended reading of both sets of poems. In the process, this article argues that in Fanshawe’s work, and in mid‐seventeenth‐century English literature more broadly, the relationship between original and translated literature occupies a space between independence and continuity, and that translators took to their task with the same energy and creativity as writers of original verse.