The 'setting foorth' of Harington's Ariosto (1591): a study of authorial intention and literary significance in book design

Abstract

Harington's Ariosto (1591) has been much studied both for its literary and for its bibliographical interest. The translation itself is still astonishingly fresh, readable and entertaining, and by the standards of the time it was remarkably faithful to the original.The first edition of 1591 is a handsome folio, complete with Dedication, Preface, an engraved title-page, forty-six engraved illustrations, and an elaborate apparatus comprising verse-arguments, annotations, a general allegory of the whole work, a life of Ariosto and other ancillary matter. The principal model for the English book was the Italian edition published in Venice in 1584 by Francesco de Franceschi, but Harington also drew on a wide range of other sources in preparing his work for publication. The basic contention of this thesis is that Harington, far from being casual or negligent in his approach as he has sometimes been thought to be, in fact took great care to reconcile and integrate all this diverse material, so that the book as a whole should serve in a responsible way to introduce Ariosto to English readers ignorant of Italian, and so that it should at the same time be a fitting demonstration of the translator's versatile abilities. It is argued that Harington himself, not the printer Richard Field, was primarily responsible for the design of the printed book, and that Harington's work as a book-designer is an essential part of his achievement. To back up this contention, a reconstruction is attempted of Harington's preparation of the printer's copy and of his participation in the work of the printing-house. The case-study of Harington's Ariosto occupies chapters II-IX of the thesis. In chapters I and X, it is argued in a more general way that the design of early printed books deserves much greater consideration than it is usually given by scholarly editors and by literary critics. McNulty's 1972 edition of Harington's Ariosto is a comparatively good example of a critical edition based on a careful study of the bibliographical as well as the literary qualities of the original editions, yet it nevertheless fails in certain significant ways to present the work as Harington wished it to be presented. It is argued that the fundamental principles of editorial fidelity need to be re-examined and re-formulated in a way that will take account of authorial intention and literary significance in book design, and that further detailed studies of individual works are necessary so that an adequate basis may be laid for historical generalisation and synthesis.