Homer for the Court of François I

Abstract

Hugues Salel’s translation of the Iliad was intended for noble, warrior readers, a conclusion based largely on internal evidence, both from the physical book (including its woodcuts) and from the French rendering of Homer’s epic. This article looks at the book’s verbal and visual texts to understand how Salel’s translation of the Iliad is shaped in anticipation of its contemporary reception. It examines a translation into the vernacular of one of antiquity’s masterpieces, as well as what noble readers knew and wanted to know, and questions the purposes and processes of the production of illustrations and marginalia in the period.