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European Translations 7

Modern Humanities Research Association

  Summer 2026

ISBN: 978-1-839546-33-4 (hardback)

ISBN: 978-1-839545-50-4 (paperback)  •  RRP £14.99, $19.99, €17.99

ISBN: 978-1-839545-51-1 (JSTOR ebook)

RenaissanceSpanishTranslationDrama

‘Tomo la pluma, aunque de poco toma en mano de mujer’: thus begins Isabel Correa’s Spanish translation of Il pastor fido (1694). Correa’s version of Giovanni Battista Guarini’s sixteenth-century play was the third ‘metamorphosis’ (metamorphoseado) of the story in a romance language. Nevertheless, her translation remains thrillingly captivating, considering, on the one hand, the translator’s profile as a published woman writer of Jewish descent, and, on the other, her translation strategies.

In the paratexts of her translation, she sharpens rather than veils her condition as a woman writer, and earnestly confesses her ambitions: to pen the ultimate Spanish translation of the text. With such supremacy in mind, she became the first woman translator of Guarini’s influential work, listing in her dedication the previous editions of the poem, with a brief explanation of the circumstances in which each of them was written, and claiming hers to be the most noteworthy for the commentary with which she adorned it. In order to justify her literary impulses, deemed rather unladylike at the time, she sought shelter in a genealogy of ancient erudite women. The work is thus a remarkable contribution to the querelle des femmes, written by a Jewish woman who ‘changed the irksome needle in favour of the entertaining quill’.

This edition offers a bilingual critical edition of Correa’s impressive translation. The book begins with an introduction which delves into the original author and his text, taking into consideration the literary trends at the time of composition, and into the translator and her (para)texts, exploring in depth her biography and her literary style. Both Guarini’s Italian text and Correa’s Spanish translation are edited in a parallel format.

Thus, in this edition, Isabel Correa’s voice will echo for the first time in the modern world in a bilingual, critical, modern edition — echoes which will be beneficial for early modern translation studies, gender studies, and Jewish studies alike.

Permanent link to this title:

www.mhra.org.uk/publications/Isabel-Correa-El-pastor-fido
www.mhra.org.uk/publications/et-7