Translation and language learning: the English version of Petrarch’s Triumph of Eternity attributed to Elizabeth I

Proficient in a number of languages, as contemporary observers often noted with amazement, Elizabeth I used translation to sharpen her linguistic skill and to investigate texts that became part of her intellectual inheritance. Thus, she translated classical authors as well as contemporary texts. This activity fits an age which saw translation not only as the most expedite way of learning and practising a language, but as an act of cultural appropriation, especially into languages such as English that were then building an intellectual vocabulary. Thus the monarch reflected the position of early modern England, a nation seeking to find a sense of itself in the world. The political marginality of England was being overcome in financial and military terms; the role of the English language was still secondary, in comparison with the great classical and modern European languages. Translation could thus become part of the process of acquisition of culture through great foreign models, and contribute to the construction of the intellectual library of the sovereign and, by implication, of the nation. The translation of Petrarch’s Triumph of Eternity has been attributed to Elizabeth, though the issue is controversial. Whether the attribution is founded or not, it tells us much about the construction of the Queen’s public persona. The present article analyses the translation in its cultural context, reflecting on the attitude the monarch had towards what was then a literary and cultural model (given also her predilection for the Italian language), and explores its relation with other works attributed to Elizabeth, especially her translation of Boethius’ De consolatione Philosophiae, seeing in both works a reflection on the role of the sovereign in a God-ordained universe.