Moral maxims - Info and Reading Options

The Open Library:

"Every major author in the eighteenth century knew La Rochefoucauld's Maximes; Voltaire reported that the French knew these maxims by heart. Now, for the first time, scholars of Anglo-French literary relations can read each maxim in this period translation together with its French original. For added convenience, the editor has also supplied an appendix containing the authentic Rochefoucauld maxims that did not appear in the 1749 translation. That translation, which was preceded by at least five previous translations of this immensely popular work, became the dominant translation for the next hundred years. When it was superseded by more reliable and authoritative translations, it fell into disuse and neglect. Yet for us today, it has strong historical and literary significance because it was the first annotated translation of this work, and also because it was the first and perhaps only English translation in which the scattered maxims found in the duke's early editions were now rearranged alphabetically by topic. Dr. Primer's new annotations, together with his historical and biographical introduction and bibliography, contribute significantly to our understanding of the reception and translation history of the duke's single masterpiece." "In preparing his translation for an English audience, the anonymous translator made many references to English authors in his notes, among them More, Hobbes, Swift, and Milton. While he could also have used a variety of French comments on the duke's maximes as well, he deliberately chose to cater to his English readers by emphasizing English parallels and classical sources. In his introduction, Dr. Primer reviews the translation history of the duke's maxims and finds that some of the main characteristics of this translation were borrowed from the posthumously published French edition prepared by the Sieur Abraham-Nicholas Amelot de la Houssaye, whose presence in this edition is visible from time to time. The anonymous translator of selections from Amelot's edition adopted a more colloquial style than is generally associated with La Rochefoucauld's maxims; he also turns out to be significant not only as a translator but also as a reinterpreter of the central moral issue in the entire book. Most readers, including Jonathan Swift, had taken the duke's position on human nature to be the same as Hobbes's (stressing the human being's selfishness or natural egoism), but the translator/annotator finds that the duke's message is not inconsistent with the more positive view of human nature found in Lord Shaftesbury and in the poetry of Pope."--Jacket.

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