In the introductory “Challenging Fragmentation, Striving for Inclusion,” editor Alessandro Zironi offers a rationale for the pairing of fragmentation and inclusion, and the origins of this set of thirteen essays in a 2021 conference in Bologna with a subtly different name, “Fragmentation and Inclusion: Medieval Translation in Between.” The Italian gathering was part of the Cardiff Conference on the Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages. Zironi points up what he sees as the paradox of fragmentation and incorporation, the consequences of which vary from synthesis to simple juxtaposition. These introductory remarks are then followed by a more conventional synopsis of individual essays, gathered under three headings. Further comment on the rather procrustean bed onto which individual authors are laid is deferred to a later point in this review.
“Part One: Adapting to Include” is introduced by Paola Spazzali’s “Dal latino al volgare: un’orazione ‘renana’ nel XV e XVI secolo,” which examines the spread of Marian prayers in the Rhineland in the late Middle Ages. These texts were adapted to the rules and aspirations of individual convents, putting them at some distance from their Latin originals. Was there some tension between the old and new schools? Silvia Nocentini writes about a very different point of departure for adaptation in “La traduzione italiana della Vita di santa Brigida di Svezia.” Birgit was already a known quantity in Italy, having taken up residence there. The vernacular text is very close in time to the canonization of the Swedish queen. The translation effort is une oeuvre de haute vulgarisation to meet the needs of Franciscan houses, with a nice contrast between queen and simple monk. The vernacular text is very close in time to the canonization of the Swedish queen at the close of the fourteenth century. This section closes with Marusca Francini's “Among Languages and Writing Systems: Prayers in Latin and in the Vernacular in Medieval Scandinavia,” nicely complementing texts dealing with Birgit, while also being a little exotic. The Scandinavian rulers and their subjects were late converts to Christianity, so that Latin was more of an alien tongue than elsewhere and there was a substantial gap in cultural capital. Prior to wholesale conversion, the initial drivers were the perceived advantages of Latin literacy and an orientation toward Europe. Popular piety would follow. “Sketching Guthlac as a Model of Monastic Virtues: Vercelli XXIII, Guthlac A and the Vita Sancti Guthlaci”is Raffaele Cioffi’s topic, and British devotional literature will be seen as a model for other vernacular adapters. Even here in a fully English cultural context the distinction between the two Guthlacs is evident, with the new text much more concerned with simplification and explanation. A new procedure is evident in Tatsuya Nii’s “Textual Alterations as Re-translations: John Lydgate’s Aureate Lyrics in Manuscript and Early Print.” Here one speaks of “aureate translation.” This is retranslation, as the poet moves from Latin to the vernacular, then embellishes these poems, largely devoted to the cult of Mary, while also seeking a more popular reception. Multiple authorial moves here. To conclude Part 1, Luciana Cordo Russo writes on “The Translator in the Text: The Narrative Voice of the Middle Welsh Otuel.” The direction of transmission is from Old French romance to a Middle Welsh text and the adapter is at some pains to ensure that his Welsh audience not sense itself as too provincial in comparison with mainland European cultural values.
Part Two is under the rubric “Creation and Transformation,” although this seems a little arbitrary. It opens with Mariyana Tsibranska-Kostova and Irena Kristeva’s “La traduction vieux-slave du Poenitentiale Merseburgense: modèle exemplaire d’entre-deux-langues au Moyen âge.” This is the most novel topic in the book, as the adapter must also cross a religious divide. Megan Bushnell follows with “Creating a Literary Koine: How Gavin Douglas Translates Repetition in the Eneados.” Here the task is not only to convert linguistically, Latin to Scots, but also replace one stylistic device with one or more others. While true to Virgil, Douglas, more of a professional man of letters than other translators, is keenly aware of the state of translations in his age. Marian Rothstein’s contribution is “Fragmentation, Translation and Dido’s Diversity.” The three-way tension that must be resolved in this adaptation of Virgil’s character is between what was known of the historical Dido (from Justin), Virgil’s tragic queen, and the emerging heroine of Old French romance. Pierandrea Gottardi returns us to Britain with “Translation, Function, Semantics: from the Romance of Horn to King Horn.” The Middle English version, affected by oral stylistics and English literary conventions, downplays the ethical and religious dimension of French society, while also displaying an awareness of other contemporary adaptations of the King Horn story. The section closes with Anne Mouron’s “The Case of Two Manuscripts Belonging to Jeanne d’Evreux, Queen of France.” The queen was literate in Latin and French but brought a tension-free, culturally unified reading to her personal library, the stimulus to meditation. A reading public of one.
Part Three, “Language Inclusions,” opens with Adele Cipolla’s “Tristan in Munich, BSB, MS Cgm 51. Observations on an Intermodal Romance.” The German adaptation is complemented by illuminations that provide insight into court life on the other side of the Rhine. The essay that closes the volume, “Illumination and Text in the Pearl-Manuscript (London, British Library, MS Cotton Nero A.x.),” is by Sibilla Siano. Interestingly, the illuminations further the understanding of the new text, de-alienating it and bring it into conformity with English court life.
Discussion returns now to the book’s prefatory remarks. The conference comprised more papers than those published here. So much for inclusion. Of the thirteen published papers, ten are by female scholars. The editors have presented contributions in such a way as to support the paradoxical parity they seek to demonstrate. Yet little of this tendentious theorization is needed for, or even à propos of, the matter-of-fact essays that follow. We might invoke Giorgio Agamben’s notion that an apparent binary opposition can be seen at greater distance to be in fact complementary. From this we might extract the condition of the homo sacer, who leads his “bare life” in near-outlawry. The target vernacular text shares the condition of the homo sacer, free to become what it would. The greatest shortcoming of the editorial introduction is, however, the failure to make any mention of the medieval glossing tradition. In a manuscript text and its glosses we have in a nutshell all the problematics of the full-scale move of textual matter between source and target languages (see Medieval Glossaries from North-Western Europe: Tradition and Innovation, eds. Seiler, Benati, and Pons-Sanz, 2023). What are the criteria for the “inclusion” of the gloss? What is its register? To which readers is it directed? Is an ideological agenda discernible? Glossing is even more relevant, since most of the texts examined here also aim for explanation and local functionality. The merits of this volume must then be said to lie with the essays, all of which are competent as scholarship and address a fascinating diversity in subject matter.