Translating in modern Europe (^16th-17th centuries)

The lecture was devoted to one word, or rather two: sprezzatura and curiosity. In previous years, attention had focused on the textual migrations that ensure a work's passage from one language to another (with Amelot de la Houssaie's translation of Gracián'sOráculo manual ), from one genre to another (with theatrical adaptations of Don Quixote), or from one horizon of expectation to another (with the successive lives of Las Casas' Brevissima relación ). By reducing the scale of the analysis, the lecture aimed to show the challenge thrown down to translators and readers by the introduction of new or ambiguous words that were nonetheless essential to the societies of early modernity. We therefore began with Castiglione's Livre du courtisan , which in 1528 introduced a new word to describe the singularity of the courtier: sprezzatura.