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The Reception of Aeschylus in Sixteenth-Century Italy: The Case of Coriolano Martirano’s Prometheus Bound (1556)

From the book Making and Rethinking the Renaissance

  • Giovanna Di Martino

Abstract

In 1737, a plagiarist named Giovanni Scarfò reprinted as his own a liber rarissimus containing some otherwise forgotten versions of Greek tragedies and comedies, translated into Latin by Coriolano Martirano and published by his nephew in 1556. Amongst these, there appears the first version of any Aeschylean play published in Italy; specifically, the tragedy that has been regularly revisited in Europe in varying forms over the centuries: the Prometheus Bound. In this chapter, I argue that Martirano’s translation strongly informs Renaissance translation theory by its reference to the key factors that would influence translators and writers in subsequent centuries - patronage, religion and dramaturgical translatability. Through his translation, Martirano also presents a particular interpretation of Prometheus, represented as an icon of defiance in his struggle against a tyrannical Zeus, one that foreshadows some of the most evocative readings of the play belonging to the Romantic period.

© 2019 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Munich/Boston
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