Medieval Translator The Theory and Practice of Translation in the Middle Ages [Hardcover]

These studies of the theory and practice of translation in the middle ages show a wide range of translational practices, on texts which range from anonymous Middle English romances and Biblical commentaries to the writings of Usk, Chaucer and Malory. Included among them is a paper on a hitherto unknown woman translator, Dame Eleanor Hull; a paper which compares a draft translation with its fair copy to show how its translator worked; a paper which shows how the mystic Rolle sought to translate his heightened spiritual experiences into words; and so on. In a medieval translation the general priority of meaning over form and style enabled, even obliged, the translator to act more like an author than like a scribe. Consequently, the study of medieval translation throws important light on contemporary, attitudes to, and understandings of, fundamental literary questions: for example, and most importantly, that of the role of the author.Introduction - Roger EllisThe fortunes of 'non verbum pro verbo': or, why Jerome is not a Ciceronian - Late medieval English translation: types and reflections - J D BurnleyChaucer as translator - T W MachanPrologue and practice: Middle English lives of Christ - Ian JohnsonDame Eleanor Hull: a fifteenth-century translator - Alexandra BarrattThe Ashmole Sir Ferumbras: translation in holograph - Steven H A ShepherdTranslation as expansion: poetic practice in the Old English Phoenix and some other poems - Anne SavageIpomedon to Ipomadon A: two views of courtliness - Rosalind FieldMalory's questing beast and the implications of author as translator - Catherine BattTranslation and self-canonization in Richard Rolle's Melos Amoris - Nicholas WatsonTransposition: Thomas Usk's Testament of Love - Stephen Medcalf