My seminar will provide a brief overview of my new research project, Scotland and Translation of the Classics, which focuses upon two key periods of cultural renaissance in Scotland—the sixteenth century and the post-devolution era. The authority embedded in classical texts was appropriated through translation into the vernacular and was used towards claiming political legitimacy and fostering a strong sense of national identity. I hope to contribute to new interest in the regional literatures of the British Isles by arguing that classical texts and their translation have played an important role in Scotland’s claim to cultural and political authority in Europe in the sixteenth century and in recent times, periods in which Scotland had, and has now partially regained, significant political power. Gavin Douglas’ translation of the Aeneid, completed in 1513, was the first vernacular translation of Vergil’s national Roman epic in Britain. Douglas gave his work a polemical, patriotic bent by choosing to translate the Latin poem into Scots rather than into southern English.

The Scottish Aeneid is distinguished by its extensive paratextual material: prologues to all of the books, and a variety of end material, whose relationships to the translation needs still to be analysed. This seminar will look at this detail alongside the translation, exploring the various forms through which Douglas wields cultural authority in this pioneering work.

Carole Newlands’ research interests include classical and Medieval Latin literature and cultural and reception studies. She has published several books: Playing with Time: Ovid and the Fasti (Cornell 1995); Statius Siluae and the Poetics of Empire (Cambridge 2002); Siluae Book 2 (Cambridge 2011); Statius: a Poet between Rome and Naples (London 2012); Ovid: an introduction (London 2015).  She is also co-editor of the Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Ovid (Oxford 2014); The Brill Companion to Statius (Leiden 2015); and Ancient Campania (Illinois 2015).  Her new work involves travel in the imperial Roman world and the role that the Classics played in Scottish culture. 

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