Jeanette Beer - Böcker

At no time in the history of the West has translation played a more vital role than in the Middle Ages. Centuries before the appearance of the first extant vernacular documents, bilingualism, and preferably trilingualism, was a necessity in the scriptorium and chancery; and since the emergence of Romance had rendered the entire corpus of classical literature incomprehensible to all but the literati, both old and new worlds awaited (re)discovery or, to use Jerome's metaphor, conquest. The diversity of medieval translation is illustrated, although not encompassed, by the diversity of chapters in the present volume. Authors treat the methods and reception of translators of vernacular to Latin and vernacular to vernacular, texts of a variety of genres and many different languages and periods. The collection will present a welcome offering of different scholarly approaches to the critical issue of medieval translators and their craft.

In Their Own Words examines early medieval history-writing through quotation practices in five works, each in some way the first of its kind. Nithard’s Historiae de dissensionibus filiorum Ludovici Pii is extraordinary for its quotation of vernacular oaths, the first recorded piece of French. The Gesta Francorum is the first eye-witness account of the First Crusade. Geoffrey of Villehardouin’s La ConquÊte de Constantinople, written by a leader and negotiator of the Fourth Crusade, and Robert de Clari’s La ConquÊte de Constantinople, written by a common soldier in the same crusade, are the first extant French prose histories. Li Fet des Romains, a translation and compilation of all the classical texts about Julius Caesar (including Caesar’s own Gallic Wars) that were known in the thirteenth century, is the first work of ancient historiography and the first biography to appear in French.Jeanette Beer’s work bridges the divide between the study of vernacular and Latin writing, providing new evidence that the linguistic cultures were not isolated from each other. Her examination of quotation practices in early medieval histories illuminates the relationship between classical and contemporary influences in the formative period of history-writing in the West.

Translation played an essential role throughout the Middle Ages, bridging the gap between literate and lay, and enabling intercourse between languages in multi-lingual Europe. Because of its universality and its vitality, and because it unlocked the door to antiquity's cultural heritage, medieval translation was extremely diverse, ranging from the literality and Latinity of legal documents to the free adaptation of courtly romance. This guide to medieval translation covers religious and vernacular texts, treating translation’s multilingual contexts, its didactic and social agenda, and its rhetorical presuppositions. The contributors also address the theoretical and pragmatic problems faced by modern translators of medieval works as they attempt to mediate between past and present.

It is fast becoming dogma that French prose emerged out of poetry by a process of deversification in the thirteenth century. Since the earliest extant example of written French prose dates back to the eighth century, this premise cannot be taken at face value. Prose had been the medium of the clercs for many centuries before the thirteenth. It had been honed by constant use to all manner of functions whether legal, diplomatic, epistolary, or edificatory (to name only those exemplified in this study). Early Prose in France is above all a reevaluation, an attempt to call into question the assumption that deversification could have been responsible for the emergence of such lengthy prose works as the crusading chronicles and the encyclopedic translations of the early thirteenth century. In this volume Beer demonstrates the sophisticated stylistic propensities of Early French prose, an effort long needed that does a great service to all French literary scholars.

Translation and the Transmission of Culture between 1300 and 1600 is a companion volume to Medieval Translators and their Craft (1989) and, like Medieval Translators, its aim is to provide the modern reader with a deeper understanding of the early centuries of translation in France. This collection works from the premise that translation never was, and should not now be, envisaged as a genre. Translatio was and continues to be infinitely variable, generating a correspondingly variable range of products from imitatively creative poetry to treatises of science. In the exercise of its multi-faceted set of practices the same controversies occurred then as now: creation or replication? Literality or freedom? Obligation to source or obligation to public? For this reason, the editors avoided periodization, but the volume makes no pretense at temporal exhaustiveness-the subject of translation is too vast. The contributors do, however, aim to shed light on several aspects of translation that have hitherto been neglected and that, despite the earliness of the period, have relevance to our understanding of translation whether in France or generally. Like its companion, this collection will be of interest to scholars of translation, textual studies, and medieval transmission of texts.