"What We Understand by Translation": The Reception of Demosthenes in the Edinburgh and Quarterly Review

Analysing the reception of a French translation of Demosthenes’s speeches (1819-1821, Paris: Verdière), this paper is situated on the intersection between Romantic Periodical Studies and Classical Reception Studies. Despite both research fields having been particularly vibrant during the last decade, the use of the classics in Romantic periodicals has remained largely unexplored, contrary to the presence of Greek and Roman material in the works of Romantic poets such as Shelley, Byron, and Keats. Christopher Stray’s essay “Politics, Culture, and Scholarship: Classics in the Quarterly Review” (2007) still counts as a notable exception. Presenting a timely intervention in Romantic scholarship, this paper investigates two series of reviews of a French translation and edition of Demosthenes’s speeches. The Edinburgh Review dedicated three reviews to this work between 1820 and 1822 (written by John Williams, Henry Brougham, and Francis Jeffrey), while the Quarterly Review published reviews in 1822, 1823, and 1826. In the reviews, both periodicals rewrite the history of Athenian democracy, using the classics as a weapon in contemporary debates over political reform. Furthermore, my paper examines how the periodicals’ comments on translation and cultural transfer serve to construct their identity as authoritative purveyors of knowledge. The Edinburgh Review’s criticism of French classical scholarship, for instance, is of special interest in a post-Waterloo context. Moreover, quotation, translation, and paraphrase not only raise the classical awareness of the ‘middling’ classes, but simultaneously set out an elitist educational ideology for gentlemanly “classical readers” (ER Jan 1820 p.233). This shows how Romantic periodicals are inherently economic ventures trying to cater for old as well as new markets.status: publishe