‘Harken to Me’: Middle English Romances in Translation (review)

‘Harken to Me’ is a collection of Middle English romances in translation ‘intended to introduce these important groups of works to readers who would not encounter them elsewhere or study them in the original text,’ as its introduction on the homepage of the online journal Medieval Forum has said. It contains prose translations of Launfal, King Edward and the Shepherd, Lay le Freine, Gowther, Amadace, Havelok, The Awntyrs off Arthure at the Terne Wathelyn, The Wedding of Sir Gawain and Dame Ragnell, Ywain and Gawain, and The Earl of Tolouse: a varied selection that ranges from the edges of the genre to its centers. Because this is an ‘introduction’ to these poems (rather than, for example, an ‘adaptation,’ as some of the Middle English poems are of their French sources), I expect, first, that the translation should provide a friendly setting for the meeting of strangers, and, second, that its first impressions should form a dependable basis for further conversation.

This volume does the first job well. The translators have been sensitive to the variety in these texts. For example, to signal that Arthur’s character is not consistent from poem to poem, they have resisted normalizing his name; thus the Arthur in The Awntyrs off Arthure is not the Arthoure in The Wedding of Sir Gawain. Most significantly, the Notes and Commentaries on each poem focus on the social contexts of the romances—one of the more fruitful methods, in recent scholarship, of approaching these texts. The apparatus foregrounds many of these contexts, even if it passes over others; I wonder, for example, why the Commentary for Ywain and Gawain discusses at length both stewards and hermits, which play a minor role in the poem, and does not draw comparable attention to the poet’s intense interest in judicial language and procedure. But the translators should be commended for inviting us to raise just these issues.

‘Harken to Me’ is less successful in creating reliable first impressions. The translations are efficient in summarizing the action of the poems, and there are few actual inaccuracies—in line 2510 of Havelok, for example, bi þe gate means ‘by the road’ and not ‘through the gate’—but these are quibbles. More significantly, the translators have summarized and conflated freely, in order to rid the text of ‘excessive repetition.’ But the English verse romances build their effects by repetition and by the accumulation of details. These effects are lost when, for example, hosin and shon become ‘proper clothing’ in Launfal, when segges, laxes, playces brode, grete laumprees and eles in Havelok become simply ‘fish,’ or when a critical line in Gowther, ‘Now art thu Goddus chyld,’ declaring Gowther’s new paternity, is completely omitted. The translation frequently recasts direct speech as indirect speech, often drastically abridging as well; thus ‘he agreed’ is a poor substitute for Amadace line 773, ‘Atte your wille, lord, all schalle be.’ Even where direct speech is maintained, the result is sometimes improbable; when a gang of thugs starts hammering on one’s door, as in Havelok, would anyone, even in a romance, shout anything as stilted as ‘Who is it out there that starts a confrontation?’ The Middle English romances may often be ‘rym dogerel,’ but doggerel may be preferable to pedestrian and sometimes awkward prose.

This collection may serve best as a crib for beginners who are having difficulty with Middle English, even in glossed student editions. If so, the introduction of line numbers would help readers correlate the translations to the source text. The Web medium could also be used to fuller advantage. Most readers of websites do not navigate them linearly, as they might a printed book; thus the Commentaries should not assume that the reader will work through the poems in the order presented on the Contents page. Discussions of specific social issues, such as land tenure, appear in the Commentaries to certain poems...