Translation and the Truth of History - Thucydides between Valla and Hobbes

This book tells the material and intellectual history of several translations of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, from Lorenzo Valla's first Latin rendering in 1452, to the publication of Thomas Hobbes' English version in 1629. As Valla's manuscript passed through the hands of several editors and publishers who rendered it into print, it underwent a series of significant adaptations and changes, most telling in the vernacular versions in French (Claude de Seyssel, 1527), Italian (Francesco Strozzi, 1545), English (Thomas Nicholls, 1550), and Spanish (Diego Gracián, 1564) that eventually emerged. These translations were often motivated by various political or expedient uses, which the format of the printed manuscripts reveals. The book concludes with an in-depth look at to the debut in print of one the most relevant political philosophers of modernity, Thomas Hobbes' Eight Bookes of the Peloponnesian Warre. Readers will come away understanding the profound extent to which the material history of a text conditions its reception and status, and our very sense of history itself.

List of contents

• Acknowledgements


• 1: From Papyrus to Parchment and Paper, from Alexandria to Constantinople and Europe.


• 2: Valla's Thucydides and its Transit through Print.


• 3: Vernacular Translations: History as Counsel and Pattern for Political Communication.


• 4: Hobbes' Thucydides: Geometry and the Truth of History


• Conclusions


• Bibliography


• Index

About the author

José María Pérez Fernández is Professor of English Literature and Cultural Translation at the University of Granada in Spain. His research in comparative literature centers largely on early modern translation and cultural studies. He is the author of numerous articles which have appeared in books and such journals as Renaissance Quarterly, Translation and Literature, and Sendebar.

Product details

• Authors: José María Pérez Fernández
• Publisher: Oxford Academic
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Release: 26.03.2026
• EAN: 9780197902202
• ISBN: 978-0-19-790220-2
• Series: Oxford Textual Perspectives
• Subjects: Fiction > Narrative literature; Humanities, art, music > Linguistics and literary studies > General and comparative literary studies; European History, LITERARY CRITICISM / General, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / General, CE period up to c 1500, Classical texts, Literature: history & criticism, Early history: c 500 to c 1450/1500, European history: medieval period, middle ages, Literature: history and criticism, HISTORY / Europe / Medieval, Ancient, classical and medieval texts