Translation and the Truth of History

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Product Information

ISBN9780197902202
AuthorsJose Maria Perez Fernandez
PublisherOxford University Press
FormatPaperback
Number of pages272
Weight (kg)0.332
Publishing Date09/04/2026
Price (excl. tax)€29.15
Tax€1.75
Price (incl. tax)€30.90
Availability2 units in external warehouse

Product Description

This book tells the material and intellectual history of several translations of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, from Lorenzo Valla's first Latin rendering in 1452, to the publication of Thomas Hobbes' English version in 1629. As Valla's manuscript passed through the hands of several editors and publishers who rendered it into print, the History of the Peloponnesian War also underwent a series of significant adaptations and changes, most telling in the vernacular versions in French (Claude de Seyssel, 1527), Italian (Francesco Strozzi, 1545), English (Thomas Nicholls, 1550), and Spanish (Diego Gracián, 1564) that eventually emerged. These translations were often motivated by various political or expedient uses, which the format of the printed manuscripts reveals. The book concludes with an in-depth look at the debut in print of one the most relevant political philosophers of modernity, Thomas Hobbes' Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre. Readers will come away understanding the profound extent to which the material history of a text conditions its reception and status, and our very sense of history itself.