Image: Facsimile of the full page woodcut print of Matthew dipping his pen in a pot held by an angel, which prefaced Tyndale's translation of Matthew in the "Cologne Fragment."
I’m still enjoying David Daniell’s William Tyndale: A Biography
(Yale, 1994). In his discussion of
Tyndale’s early efforts at translating the Bible into English while in Cologne,
Germany, Daniell offers this reflection on how Tyndale’s labors shaped the
development of English prose:
Yet something more important is
happening; the English into which Tyndale is translating has a special quality
for the time, being the simple, direct form of the spoken language, with a
dignity and harmony that make it perfect for what it is doing. Tyndale is in the process of giving us a
Bible language. Luther is often praised
for having given, in the ‘September Bible’, a language to the emerging German
nation. In his Bible translations,
Tyndale’s conscious use of everyday words, without inversions, in a neutral
word-order, and his wonderful ear for rhythmic patterns, gave to English not
only a Bible language, but a new prose.
England was blessed as a nation in that the language of its principle
book, as the Bible in English rapidly became, was the fountain from which
flowed the lucidity, suppleness and expressive range of the greatest prose
thereafter (pp. 115-116).
No comments:
Post a Comment