06 September 2009

Rousseau's Julie: Or the New Eloise

I'm reading William Kenrick's 1761 (first) English translation, on ECCO. (Kenrick decides to cal the novel Eloisa, instead of Julie; I'll be referring to the translation by Kenrick's title.) Kenrick's pretty wacky, and the novel itself is great too. It's also fun to read things that are clearly referenced by other things, and so now I can pick out the fact that Horace Walpole must have been a fairly big fan of Eloisa. The footprints of a scene like this one are all over The Castle of Otranto:
On this [suggestion that Eloisa marry the poorer Saint-Preux) your father expressed himself in a violent passion: he treated the proposal as absurd and ridiculous. How! my lord! said he, is it possible a man of honour, as you are, can entertain such a thought, that the last surviving branch of an illustrious family should to to lose and degrade its name, in that of nobody knows who; a fellow without home, and reduced to subsist upon charity. Hold, sir, interrupted my lord, you are speaking of my friend; consider that I must take upon myself every injury done him in my company, and that such language as is injurious to a man of honour, is more so to him who makes use of it... (v.1 216-217)