SOURCE: Venuti, Lawrence. “The Destruction of Troy: translation and royalist cultural politics in the Interregnum.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 23, No. 2 (Spring 1993): 197-219.

In the essay that follows, Venuti examines The Destruction of Troy, Denham's translation of part of the Aeneid, exploring the social and political implications of his method of translation and the circumstances of its publication.

In 1656, Sir John Denham published a translation with the running title The Destruction of Troy. An Essay upon the Second Book of Virgils Æneis. Written in the year, 1636.¹ The title page is one among many remarkable things about this book: it omits any sign of authorship in favor of a bold reference to the gap between the dates of composition and publication. Most early seventeenth-century translations of classical texts are published with a signature, if not a full name (John Ashmore, John Ogilby, Robert Stapylton, John Vicars), then at...