George Chapman's "ancient Greek souls": Translating ekphrasis in Hero and Leander

George Chapman's "ancient Greek souls": Translating ekphrasis in Hero and Leander

When George Chapman dedicated his translation of Musaeus Hero and Leander to Inigo Jones, he praised the architect for his ingenuous love to all works in which the ancient Greek souls have appeared to you. Two decades earlier, in 1598, Chapman completed Marlowes Hero and Leander, adding his own adaptation of Musaeus to Marlowes translation. Chapmans complex response not only to Marlowes poem but also to classical antiquity appears in the description of Heros scarf (sestiad 4.13-121), where Chapman, using the figure of a female artist, creates an intricate ekphrasis, modelled on Achilles shield, from a variety of Greek and Roman sources. As Hero weaves her elaborate scarf, Chapman alludes to the ekphrasis of Arachnes tapestry in Ovids Metamorphoses 6, while the embroidered scenes of the fisherman and the country maid and the foxes stem from Theocritus first Idyll. Heros needle is transformed into the translators pen initiating a collaboration between living and dead poets and linking Chapman to the ancient Greek souls. This paper seeks to unravel this thread of connections, reading the ekphrasis as a gendered trope for early modern creativity and as a reflection on the translation and appropriation of ancient sources. © 2015 Taylor & Francis.

Mitsi, E.

31

3

343-349