Winnie ille Pu
AuthorAlexander Lenard
LanguageLatin
Published1958
PublisherMethuen Publishing

Winnie ille Pu is a 1958 translation of Winnie-the-Pooh into Latin by Alexander Lenard. The book was an unexpected hit, becoming the first foreign-language book to make The New York Times Best Seller list. Its success inspired the translation of a number of other children's books into Latin.

Writing and publication

Lenard was teaching at a mining community in Brazil when he began translating Winnie-the-Pooh. He was motivated by his previous experience, teaching English to a boy in Rome by using the original Winnie-the-Pooh as an aid. Lenard was fired from his teaching job while he was still working on the translation, and he continued to work from São Paulo. Publishers were skeptical of the book's potential and Lenard self-published the first printing in 1958.[1]

The initial publication was successful and spurred interest from beyond Brazil.[1] The first publishing house to print the book was Bokförlaget Forum in Sweden; it was then picked up by Methuen Publishing in the UK and then E. P. Dutton in the US.[1][2] When it was first published in the US, it received considerable praise from the press; the Christian Science Monitor went so far as to credit it with "saving Latin".[3] This positive attention caused bookstores to quickly sell out of their copies, as at first Dutton had only imported 1500 copies; the resulting shortage only increased interest in the book.[2] Overall, the book sold 125,000 copies in the US and spent 20 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, becoming the first non-English book to do so.[4] The book was particularly desirable as a coffee-table status symbol.[2][5]

Scholarly reception

Classicist opinions on the book were broadly positive. K. Vadum Fractum and Kenneth Reckford called the book "superb entertainment" and noted correspondences between themes in Winnie-the-Pooh and Roman poetry.[6] Michiel Verweij, in a 2008 retrospective, argued that Lenard had carved out a niche by not copying the writing style of Cicero, as other Latinists had.[7]

However, some classicists were more critical. Even before publication, one scholar questioned the utility of the book as a teaching aid, saying "at the time when pupils would be expected to understand your Latin properly they would already have reached the age when the subject matter would be of no interest to them".[1] This line of criticism continued after publication, with C. J. Fordyce remarking that the translation was not sufficiently fun to justify itself.[8] Additionally, even some favorable reviewers, such as Harry C. Schnur, criticized the quality of some of Lenard's Latin.[5]

Impact

The success of Winnie ille Pu spurred further interest in Latin translations of children's books. In the five years after its publication, The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Little Prince, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland were all translated into Latin. However, after this brief renaissance, the enthusiasm for translation into Latin slowly declined.[9]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Lenard, Alexander (2010). "A Few Words About Winnie ille Pu". The Hungarian Quarterly (199): 87–92. ISSN 0028-5390. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  2. 1 2 3 Graham, Elliott (1987). "Marketing Pu". The Classical Outlook. 64 (3): 73–74. ISSN 0009-8361. JSTOR 43935164.
  3. ↑ "More on Piglet Latin". The Christian Science Monitor. 1961-02-03. p. 16. ProQuest 510159271. Retrieved 2020-12-03 – via ProQuest.
  4. ↑ McDowell, Edwin (1984-11-18). "'Winnie Ille Pu' Nearly XXV Years Later". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  5. 1 2 Schnur, Harry C. (1961). "Winnie Ille Pu". The Classical World. 54 (6): 177–180. doi:10.2307/4344546. ISSN 0009-8418. JSTOR 4344546. Retrieved 2020-12-03.
  6. ↑ Fractum, K. Vadum; Reckford, Kenneth (1961). "Winnie Ille". The Classical Journal. 56 (8): 344–345. ISSN 0009-8353. JSTOR 3295032. Retrieved 2020-12-08.
  7. ↑ Verweij, Michiel (2008). "Winnie the Pooh in Latin. Or How to Put Delightful English into Equally Enjoyable Latin". Humanistica Lovaniensia. 57: 301–319. ISSN 0774-2908. JSTOR 23974080. Retrieved 2020-12-08.
  8. ↑ Fordyce, C. J. (June 1961). "Alexander Lenard: Winnie Ille Pu. A Latin version of A. A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh. Pp. 121; illus. London: Methuen, 1960. Cloth, 12s. 6d. net". The Classical Review. 11 (2): 178. doi:10.1017/S0009840X00211451. S2CID 162341292.
  9. ↑ Miller, Carl F. (2018). "Omne Vetus Novum Est Iterum: The Decline and Rise of Latin Translation in Children's Literature". Bookbird. 56 (1): 46–54. doi:10.1353/bkb.2018.0006. ISSN 0006-7377. S2CID 149102448.
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