The phenomenon of partial translations : the case of Virgil's Aeneid and Bucolics

Our conference took as its subject a significant phenomenon in translations of Virgil'sAeneid and Bucolics. It's quite clear that some translators translate entire poems, while others translate only part of the work, a single book or poem, or an even shorter extract. In France, for example, the earliest translation of the Bucolics, by Guillaume Michel de Tours (1516), covers the entire work, but subsequent translations make selections(Bucolica 1, 1532, Bucolica 2, 1542 and Bucolica 5, 1548). The fourth Bucolica enjoyed a clear preference in many languages, including Danish, French, Russian and Czech. I have attempted to present a survey of the production of complete or partial translations of theAeneid and the Bucolalia made in Europe, especially in France and England. This survey gave us the opportunity to see both synchronic and diachronic trends. Then, after specifying the most frequent translations of extracts, I asked myself why these choices persisted, and when they eventually gave way to other choices. It seems that the translator's choices were determined above all by his ambitions, his patron, and the place of publication of the translation.