The relationship between literature and history is complicated; so is that between literary translation and the history of translation. This essay begins by making some general theoretical assertions: texts known as literary do not inhabit chronology in the same way as other kinds of texts; translations, especially, disrupt historical timelines since they (almost always) arise from at least two different moments and locations. The essay then focuses on the work of John Dryden, referring also to the King James Bible and to Samuel Purchas’s translation of the Mexica Codex Mendoza, and asks what kind of historical contextualisation is necessary if these texts are to be situated, not in ‘history’
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