| Popis: |
The recent and long overdue critical reappraisal of Robert Greene’s works has been departing from the worn-out image of Greene as a hack writer to consider his extraordinary ability to innovate while revisiting the literary canon, to address the social and economic issues of his time, and mostly to adapt to the fictional taste of his contemporaries. These studies have mainly focused on his writings for the popular market and the theatre market, in an attempt at demonstrating the links between both fields. Surprisingly, there has been almost no scholarly interest in the translation of an Italian collection of aphorisms, The Royall Exchange, published in 1590, the year when Greene announced his literary conversion. As the paratext of The Royall Exchange makes explicit, the translation turns out to be an ostensible means to set a patriotic agenda. Under cover of moral philosophy, Greene’s translation of the Italian text is metamorphosed into a defense of London’s thriving economy. This chapter examines to what extent the articulation between cultural exchange and patriotic discourse entails transgressive aesthetics. It also highlights Greene’s appropriation of the Venetian paradigm to provide his fellow-citizens with a looking-glass to London’s success as a commercial metropolis. |
