This project looks at what underlies the recurrent Renaissance characterization of translation as ‘feminine’, the secondary, inferior offspring of ‘masculine’ primary texts. How does this linguistic and conceptual paradigm relate to evidence of women’s historical interactions with manuscript and printed translations? Translations - from Latin and Greek into vernaculars, and between vernaculars - were crucial to exchanges of knowledge and literatures in the European Renaissance, and especially numerous in early modern France, with its advanced printing trade and strong humanist culture. I propose the first full-scale analysis of women writing as translators, and also commissioning, printing, selling and reading translations into French, between 1500-1640.
