Toning Down Abraham: Arthur Golding’s 1577 Translation, <i>A Tragedie of Abraham’s Sacrifice</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Arthur Golding was a prolific Elizabethan translator, most famous for his rendering of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. In 1577, he translated Théodore de Bèze’s 1550 tragedy, Abraham sacrifiant. While the Huguenot’s play has been widely studied, Golding’s translation has received almost no scholarly attention. This article aims to correct this oversight through a comparison of Golding’s version with the original. The analysis shows that Golding in large part employs a deferential approach to the translation of Bèze’s play, one that is in keeping with the religious nature of the text. However, this article also demonstrates that Golding switches translation styles in key moments of the Huguenot tragedy, in particular where Bèze emphasizes the scandalous nature of God’s command and Abraham’s dilemma. In these moments, Golding uses a variety of strategies to lessen the scandalous nature of the text, thereby “pre-digesting” the material for the reader. This editorial tactic will be viewed in relation both to the interpretive approach espoused by Golding in his preface to the Metamorphoses, and to John Calvin’s treatise on offense (scandal), which Golding was translating at the same time as Ovid’s poem. Traducteur élisabéthain prolifique, Arthur Golding est surtout connu aujourd’hui pour sa traduction anglaise des Métamorphoses d’Ovide. En 1577, il a également traduit la tragédie de Théodore de Bèze intitulée Abraham sacrifiant (1550). Alors que la pièce de Bèze a été largement étudiée, la recherche a presqu’entièrement négligé sa traduction par Golding. Le présent article propose de remédier à cette lacune en comparant la traduction de Golding avec le texte original français. Notre analyse montre que Golding adopte une approche fidèle et déférente à sa traduction de la pièce de Bèze, conforme à la nature religieuse du texte. Toutefois, on montre également que Golding change de style de traduction à des moments cruciaux de la tragédie huguenote, en particulier lorsque Bèze fait ressortir l’aspect scandaleux du commandement de Dieu et le dilemme d’Abraham. Dans ces moments, Golding adopte une série de stratégies visant à réduire la nature scandaleuse du texte, offrant de cette façon au lecteur une version « pré-digérée » du récit. La tactique éditoriale de Golding est examinée en relation avec deux autres textes : l’approche interprétative qu’il présente dans la préface à ses Métamorphoses, et le traité de Jean Calvin, Des Scandales, que Golding traduisait précisément en même temps que le poème d’Ovide.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.005 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.002 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".