Portrait of the Republican as a Translator: Engaging with English Political Texts in the Eighteenth Century

Over the past decades, intellectual historians have emphasised the role played by anonymous agents in the dissemination of ideas from one cultural context to the next, from one age to the next. Indeed, reception studies have shifted the focus from the production of a text by the author to the receptor's creative involvement in interpreting and adapting it. Moreover, in the wake of seminal studies on translation, such as Benjamin's, scholars have become more interested in the role of the translator as a key vector in the transmission of ideas. Through the examples of the Huguenot Samson translating Sidney in 1702 and Henry, a French lawyer translating Harrington during the French Revolution, this paper aims to draw the portrait of a character, the francophone republican in the eighteenth century who engaged with foreign texts to promote his own ideal commonwealth. The prefaces and paratexts reveal the translator not only related to the author's ideas, but also felt the impression of a shared experience with him, beyond time and space. By translating and framing texts of the English republican canon, these historical agents played a prominent part in the formation of a republican culture in the French tongue.