The author questions national historiographies of literature, specifically literary canons, and does so by using translation as a site of critical enquiry. A study of translation reveals that in the period between 1501 and 1558, almost half the printed English verse was translated and, significantly, about six times more lines were translated from French than from Italian. This complicates a number of long-held critical assumptions, especially the presumed Italian roots of English Renaissance poetry. The core of the article engages with the special theoretical and historical challenges that these translations present to some of the central narratives of English Renaissance poetry.