Abstract

Edward Jerningham's “Impenitence” (1800)––a translation of Bossuet's “Sermon du mauvais riche” (1662)––is remarkably dissimilar to its French original. This article investigates the rhetorical reasons behind this discrepancy. These reasons concern the problems of promoting a French model of eloquence in a fiercely anti-French climate and––even more problematic––promoting a text whose main theme is a denunciation of the rich in a period of extreme counterrevolutionary fervor. Jerningham's text shows that in facing potentially resistant readers, the strategies of a translator are those of a rhetor.