John Dryden's Sister Arts: Face-Painting and Translation.

This essay examines John Dryden's conceptual parallel between face-painting and translation, proposing that Dryden viewed the original text as a face, the translated words as face-paint, and the translator as a cosmetician. Through this analogy, Dryden negotiates the tension between preserving the sacred design of the original (exemplified by Virgil's Aeneid) and exercising creative agency in translation, akin to beautifying but not obscuring a face with paint. The study surveys Dryden's ambivalent attitudes toward cosmetics in his writings and applies this framework to his 1697 translation of the Aeneid, particularly the episode of Aeneas and Lausus, revealing how Dryden's translation strategies oscillate between subtle enhancement and more assertive modification. This approach offers a nuanced reconciliation of critical debates about Dryden's translation methods and encourages further exploration of his poetic and painterly techniques.