The Canon and Elizabeth Carter

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 109-115
Author(s):  
Lena Cowen Orlin
Keyword(s):  
Elizabeth Carter

Scientific Seduction

2018 ◽  
pp. 76-103
Author(s):  
Tita Chico
Keyword(s):  
Natural Philosophy ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Aphra Behn ◽  
Conversion Process ◽  
Learning Science ◽  
Moral Self ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
Philosophical Education ◽  
Elizabeth Carter ◽  
Understanding Science

Beginning with Bacon, natural philosophy texts frequently present scientific practice as an erotic quest, establishing a correspondence between sexual seduction and natural philosophical inquiry. Bernard de Fontenelle’s and Francesco Algarotti’s scientific dialogues, translated by Aphra Behn and Elizabeth Carter, respectively, adopt the literary plot of seduction to explain and promote Cartesianism, Copernicanism, and Newtonianism. Both Behn and Carter embrace the suitability of natural philosophical education for women. For Fontenelle and Algarotti, understanding science necessitates new ways of thinking that are possible only with one’s imagination and requires that characters undergo a process of seduction. Learning science is a conversion process, simultaneously rational and affective. Mathematicians, like lovers, are persuasive and persistent, ultimately demanding submission. These scientific dialogues reframe erotic plots to promote intellectual and moral self-improvement, qualities posited as uniquely modern and widely available to the texts’ readers.

scholarly journals A Marginal(ized) Perspective on Translation History: Women and Translation in the Eighteenth Century

2005 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 817-830 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mirella Agorni
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Literary Genres ◽  
Elizabeth Carter ◽  
Male Dominated ◽  
Original Approach

Abstract Translation was a prestigious activity in Britain in the Eighteenth Century, and the field was divided into two distinct areas: translation from the classics (focusing on Latin and Greek authors) which was a male-dominated territory, and translation from modern languages (French, German, Italian and Spanish) which was one of the few literary genres open to women. Yet, there were some significant exceptions in the area of the classics. I will analyze the case of Elizabeth Carter (1717-1806), the celebrated translator of Epictetus from the Greek, who developed a particularly original approach to translation, by adopting an ingenious form of proto-feminist collaboration with her friend Catherine Talbot (1721-70).

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