ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the translations of Master Ferdinando Jeronimi. When George Gascoigne published The Posies of George Gascoigne Esquire in 1575, he included 'The pleasant Fable of F. J., and Leonora de Valasco', translated, he claimed, from the Italian. It had first appeared two years earlier as 'A Discourse of the Adventures passed by Master F. J'. in the anonymous A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres, in fact, the first edition of the Posies. The 'translation' was indeed more consciously Italianate than the earlier version, which had been presented as the actual story of a young Englishman, F. J., and his affair with the married Elinor, recorded in a range of modes, including letters, poems and reported anecdote. It had a mixed reception, causing as it did speculations about the characters' identities and protests about indecency. The strongest argument for his being a fake is, however, the existence of 'The Adventures', which plainly is not a translation from an Italian romance.
