Signs Taken for Wonders: The Vanity of Human Wishes and the Production of a “Relevant” Translation

The essay proposes a reading of TVHW in formal terms, by situating the poem in the historical context, in which translation of Classical texts into the English tongue was generally undertaken on a strong ideological position. The proposed formal analysis adopts Derrida’s concept that translation operates as a position-marked ransformation of the symbolic machine of the original, & the task of ransformation is conducted usually in terms of the logic of supplementarity. The analysis is meant to recommend a re-interpretation of the poem in light of the strategic play it puts on in order to arrive at a “modern” textual & cultural translation of its Latin original.