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Seventeenth-Century Fiction: Text and Transmission

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John Barclay’s Argenis (Paris, 1621)

By Isabelle M M Moreau, on 12 September 2013

Post written by Jacqueline Glomski

 

The ‘no 1 bestseller’ of the seventeenth century was written in Latin. But, neither the language in which it was composed nor its classical setting put people off. For John Barclay’s Argenis was everything a blockbuster novel should be: a tightly written, probing, and exciting work of fiction. It energetically brought to life the swash-buckling adventures of a handsome, young noble, complete with shipwrecks, pirates, and hand-to-hand combat; it sensitively asked whether a charming princess should be forced to marry a man she did not love while the man to whom she had secretly promised herself was absent, pulling together his forces so that he could prove his royal identity to her father; it intelligently reflected on the components of good government; and it sensationally portrayed the darker side of the conduct of political celebrities, exposing secret surveillance, aborted insurgence, and attempted poisoning. The extreme popularity of Argenis among the (mostly male) educated classes quickly swept over the general reading public. Within five years of its 1621 publication, Argenis had been translated into English, French, Spanish, and German. For those who did not have the time or patience to plough through the thousand pages of the original edition, abridged versions sprang up. And, for theatregoers, the action-packed plot of Argenis made it to the stage, in French, Spanish, and German plays. Other authors, hoping to cash in on Barclay’s success, spun off sequels. Indeed, the mania for Argenis continued throughout the seventeenth century, the Latin text being reprinted more than thirty times and with Italian, Dutch, and Polish versions added to the list of its translations. With Argenis, Barclay had paved the way for romance to be treated as a genre for the expression of serious thought, and his influence can be spotted in the works of vernacular authors such as Mademoiselle de Scudéry and Sir Percy Herbert.

But, in spite of its massive appeal, Argenis did fade from the literary scene. By the beginning of the eighteenth century, the reprints, translations, and spin-offs had dwindled: people’s tastes had changed. Barclay’s didacticism and political stance would be viewed as out of date, and his allegorical approach would be perceived as stale. Heroic romance had fallen out of favour.

Today, Barclay’s Argenis has been nearly forgotten as a readable text, except for a new Latin edition with the 1625 English translation of Kingesmill Long (with spelling, punctuation, and grammar modernised) brought out by Mark Riley and Dorothy Pritchard Huber in 2004 (Assen, Netherlands; Tempe, AZ). The omission of Argenis from university reading lists leaves a gap in the transmission of the cultural record of the seventeenth century; the lack of fresh translations deprives the general public of a thoroughly enjoyable and moving novel, one that has much to say for our times.

 

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