Gifting Translation in Early Modern England: Women Writers and the Politics of Authorship

Translation was a critical mode of discourse for early modern writers. Gifting Translation in Early Modern England: Women Writers and the Politics of Authorship examines the intersection of translation and the culture of gift-giving in early modern England, arguing that this intersection allowed women to subvert dominant modes of discourse through acts of linguistic and inter-semiotic translation and conventions of gifting. The book considers four early modern translators: Mary Bassett, Jane Lumley, Jane Seager, and Esther Inglis. These women negotiate the rhetorics of translation and gift-culture in order to articulate political and religious affiliations and beliefs in their carefully crafted manuscript gift-books. This book offers a critical lens through which to read early modern translations in relation to the materiality of early modern gift culture.

Kirsten Inglis teaches in the Department of English at the University of Calgary. She held a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Alberta’s Department of English and Film Studies. She has published essays on Shakespeare, adaptation and editing, and early modern manuscript drama. Her current research focuses on seventeenth-century women’s epistolary networks.