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A Translator’s Defense

Giannozzo Manetti author Mark Young translator Myron McShane editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Harvard University Press

Published:29th Oct '15

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A Translator’s Defense cover

Giannozzo Manetti (1396–1459) was an Italian diplomat and a celebrated humanist orator and scholar of the early Renaissance. Son of a wealthy Florentine merchant, he turned away from a commercial career to take up scholarship under the guidance of the great civic humanist, Leonardo Bruni. Like Bruni he mastered both classical Latin and Greek, but, unusually, added to his linguistic armory a command of Biblical Hebrew as well. He used his knowledge of Hebrew to make a fresh translation of the Psalms into humanist Latin, a work that implicitly challenged the canonical Vulgate of St. Jerome. His Apologeticus (1455–59) in five books was a defense of the study of Hebrew and of the need for a new translation. As such, it constituted the most extensive treatise on the art of translation of the Renaissance. This ITRL edition contains the first complete translation of the work into English.

Renders accessible a valuable document that testifies to the ambition and the breadth of learning of a major Florentine humanist. * Renaissance Quarterly *
A key document in the field of early modern translation theory. * Seventeenth-Century News *
This edition of the I Tatti Renaissance library is laudable, for it has for the first time presented the complete English translation of Manetti, allowing readers not only to acquaint themselves with the text but also somehow to denude the author’s persona and his treatise of any unnecessary mystery. * Manuscripta Orientalia *

ISBN: 9780674088658

Dimensions: 203mm x 133mm x 23mm

Weight: 454g

352 pages