Queen Katherine Parr as a translation bellwether: The instances of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor
Julie Van Parys-Rotondi
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Title
Queen Katherine Parr as a translation bellwether: The instances of Mary and Elizabeth Tudor
Abstract
Queen Katherine Parr (1512?-1548) is mostly remembered as King Henry VIII’s sixth and last wife who nursed her incapacitated and irascible husband towards the end of his life. Her intellectual contribution is often overlooked in spite of Parr being the first English woman to ever have published a book under her own name in England. As a humanist and a devout first-generation Evangelical, she became interested in translation in the vernacular as a means of spreading the New Learning as well as Protestant interpretations of the Gospel. This paper explores her commitment to the translation of Erasmus’s Paraphrases of the New Testament (1524), as well as her influence on her stepdaughters, princesses Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, through the study of their correspondence. In addition, it addresses the way Queen Katherine’s influence on the religious sphere was praised by such contemporaries as Thomas Bentley and John Bale. Indeed, the queen quickly understood the power of translation as a form of expression, not only as the rendering of the original author’s ideas, but also, more importantly, as a mode of voicing personal ideas and a way to reach posterity, especially at a time when women were, by law, particularly restricted in the sphere of religious opinions. Queen Katherine Parr encouraged the princesses to join her translation endeavor and thus encouraged them to express their own voices in devotional literature.
Keywords
Reformation, translation, Queen Katherine Parr, Tudor, Erasmus
34(1) - 2022