Translating Mind and Desires: Physiology of Passions in Peletier’s and Wyatt’s Translations of Petrarch’s Fragmenta

This article compares two poet-translators of Petrarch’s "Rerum Vulgarium Fragmenta", who have never been compared or interlinked. We have no evidence about a close connection between Jacques Peletier (1517-1582) and Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), but they seem to share a similar translative imaginary by highlighting the most passionate – even erotic – features of Petrarchan poetry. The comparative analysis in this context will thus constitutes the very first attempt to test the full potential of the theory of translation imaginaries from a transnational and synchronic standpoint.