Translating the Middle Ages

Karen L. Fresco is Associate Professor of French, Medieval Studies, and Gender and Women's Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Charles D. Wright is Professor of English, Director of the Program in Medieval Studies, and Editor of the Journal of English and Germanic Philology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Drawing on approaches from literary studies, history, linguistics and art history, and ranging from Late Antiquity to the sixteenth century, this collection views 'translation' broadly as the adaptation and transmission of cultural inheritance. The essays look at the practice of textual translation across languages, medieval translators' views and performance of translation, and demonstrate that translation was a key element in the construction of cultural and political identity.

Contents: Introduction, Catherine Batt; Part 1 What¿s in a Word: Dictionaries, definitions and databases, Brian Merrilees; The translation of nature: Al-Sharif al-Idrisi on the plant life of the Western Mediterranean, Russell Hopley. Part 2 Translation and Devotional Selfhood: Translating ma dame de Saint-Pol: the privilege and predicament of the devotee in the Legiloque manuscript, Aden Kumler; Foul fiends and dirty devils: Henry, Duke of Lancaster¿s Book of Holy Medicines and the translation of 14th-century devotional literature, Catherine Batt; Languages low and high: translation and the creation of the community in the Chester Pentecost play, Robert W. Barrett Jr. Part 3 Translation in Italy: Dante¿s Comedy: the poetics of translation, Christopher Kleinhenz; Traces of translators in late medieval Italian vernacularizations, Alison Cornish. Part 4 Translations of Antiquity and of the Romance Tradition: Translating Julius Caesar, Jeanette Beer; John Lydgate¿s ¿ugly¿ Orpheus: translation and transformation in the Fall of Princes, Russell Stone; Intervernacular translation in the early decades of print: chivalric romance and the marvelous in the Spanish Melusine (1489-1526), Ana Pairet. Part 5 Translations and Religious and Political Institutions: Monks and history: Byzantine chronicles in Church Slavic, Boris A. Todorov; Greek at the Papal court during the Middle Ages, Réka Forrai; Translation, transcription, and transliteration in the polemics of Raymond Martini, OP, Ryan Szpiech; Bibliography; Index.