“Sacred hunger for gold!” The Virgilian hypotext in the French translations of Purg. XXII, 40-41

The tools of corpus linguistics, applied to traductology, may help to systematically determine some trends – evolutionary or involutionary – in the history of translation. These trends are particularly visible in the case of canonical works that have undergone multiple retranslations over the centuries. By means of a case study (the translations of Purg. XXII, 40-41), this study aims to outline the evolution of the meaning of “sacré” (an axiologically ambigous term) and, thus, of the sense of the Sacred in the French language and culture. To this end, we will examine the translator’s reactions to the intertext of Purgatorio (Æn. III 56-57). The oscillation between choices favouring the Virgilian hypotext or the Dantean hypotext (studied in a corpus of 41 versions of the Purgatorio published between 1800 and 2020) will make it possible to formulate the hypothesis of a slow and gradual “re-theologisation” of the Commedia in the French culture.