Thomas Shelton (translator)

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Thomas Shelton 's († after 1620) the First translator of Cervantes " Don Quixote " into English (1612).

life and work

He is a mysterious personality in English literature that cannot be precisely localized in terms of time and place. In his dedication “ The delightful history of the wittie knight, Don Quishote vjd ” (1612) Thomas Shelton explains to his patron, Lord Howard de Walden , later 2nd Earl of Suffolk, that 5 to 6 years earlier he had “ The History of Don-Quixote "Translated from Spanish into English within forty days (" out of the Spanish tongue, into the English ... in the space of forty daies: being therunto more than half enforced, through the importunitie of a very deere friend, that was desirous to understand the subject. ")

Thomas Shelton did not use the original edition of the first part of Cervantes' masterpiece, but a Spanish version published in Brussels in 1607. The translation was done at a time when Cervantes was still alive. In 1620, four years after the publication of the second part of the Spanish “Brussels” edition of Don Quixote 1616, the year Cervantes died, the second part of the English translation of Don Quixote by Thomas Shelton also appeared in print together with a revised edition of the first Part. His translation became an early classic among translations into English because of his extremely ingenious skill, although later translators (such as John Ormsby) sharply criticized his too free "artistic" translation skills.

expenditure

  • The history of Don Quixote of the Mancha. Translated from the Spanish of Miguel de Cervantes by Thomas Shelton, annis 1612, 1620 . With introductions by James Fitzmaurice-Kelly. David Nutt, London 1896

literature

  • AE Whitaker: The Shelton Family . In: The William and Mary Quarterly 1929
  • Edwin B. Knowles: The First and Second Editions of Shelton's Don Quixote Part I: A Collation and Dating . In: Jr. Hispanic Review 1941
  • Edwin B. Knowles: Thomas Shelton, Translator of Don Quixote Author (s): Studies in the Renaissance . 1958
  • Sidney Lee :  Shelton, Thomas (fl . 1612) . In: Sidney Lee (Ed.): Dictionary of National Biography . Volume 52:  Shearman - Smirke. , MacMillan & Co, Smith, Elder & Co., New York City / London 1897, pp. 44 - 45 (English, ( DjVu format, in the English language Wikipedia and on Wikisource )).
  • LG Kelly: Shelton, Thomas (fl. 1598-1629). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of January 2008 (not viewed).
  • Dale BJ Randall / Jackson C. Boswell: Cervantes in Seventeenth-Century England. The Tapestry Turned . Oxford UP, Oxford 2009.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Shelton, Thomas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION First translator of Cervantes "Don Quixote"
DATE OF BIRTH 16th Century
DATE OF DEATH after 1620