Form[e]s of transnationhood: the case of J ohn W olfe's trilingual C ourtier

This article treats the importance of printing and translation, and of printing as a kind of translation, in J ohn W olfe's 1588 trilingual edition of the Courtier. At a signal moment in E ngland's international relations, this book brings not a new word to E nglish readers: the included H oby, C happuys, and C astiglione versions were widely available in E ngland (previous editions in E nglish and L atin, and the bilingual F rench editions on which W olfe probably based the concept of this work, are noted here). But W olfe's mise‐en‐page establishes and encourages a newly internationalized E nglish courtiership, and his choices of previous paratexts are also strategic and significant in the new moment. The edition does much more than multiply by three H oby's appropriative impulses. W olfe's page strategies, together with his selected paratexts, inculcate an engagement with alterity that offers a new answer to E ngland's old predicament of wanting – and not wanting – what the continent had to offer.