venuti

Canon 51a “new” cultural practice that will enable the defeated royalist segmentof the Caroline aristocracy to regain its hegemonic status in Englishculture. In his commendatory verses “To Sir Richard Fanshawe uponhis Translation of Pastor Fido” (1648), Denham calls free translation “anew and nobler way” (Steiner 1975:63). Given the political significanceof this method, it is important for Denham to translate a text in a genrethat treats nobility, the epic, and refuse the French burlesques thatdebased Virgil’s aristocratic theme by treating social inferiors in theepic manner.Denham’s intention to enlist translation in a royalist cultural politicsat home is visible both in his selection of the foreign text and in thediscursive strategies he adopted in his version. The choice to translateVirgil’s Aeneid in early modern England could easily evoke Geoffrey ofMonmouth’s legend that Brute, the grandson of Aeneas, foundedBritain and became the first in a succession of British monarchs.Although this like the Arthurian legends was losing credibility amonghistorians and antiquarians, the matter of Troy continued to be thecultural support of a strong nationalism, and it was repeatedly revisedfrom different and often conflicting ideological standpoints in a widerange of texts—from William Camden’s Britannia (1586) to Jonson’sSpeeches at Prince Henry’s Barriers (1609) to Thomas Heywood’s Life ofMerlin (1641). 3 The early Stuart kings were often given a Trojangenealogy. Anthony Munday’s contribution to the royal progressthrough London, The Triumphs of Re-united Britannia (1605), referred toJames I as “our second Brute”; Heywood described his narrative as “aChronographicall History of all the Kings and memorable passages ofthis kingdom, from Brute to the Reigne of our Royall Soveraigne KingCharles” (Parsons 1929:403, 407). In the political debates during theInterregnum, a Trojan genealogy could be used to justify bothrepresentative government and absolute monarchy. In 1655, theparliamentarian polemicist William Prynne interpreted thesignificance of the legend as “1. A Warre to shake off Slavery, andrecover publick Liberty. 2. A kinde of Generall Parliamentary Councellsummoned by Brute”; whereas in a legal commentary published in1663 Edward Waterhouse argued that Brute “by his consent to rewardthe valour and fidelity of his Companions” instituted laws “bothtouching his Royal Prerogative, and their civil Security in life, member,goods and Lawes” (Jones 1944:401, 403).Denham’s own appropriation of the Brute legend in Coopers Hillswells with patriotic fervor, but it also possesses the awareness thatthe Trojan genealogy is a legend, increasingly under attack yet able