Medieval Translations and Cultural Discourse. The Movement of Texts in England, France and Scandinavia (review)

The subtitle of Sif Rikhardsdottir's Medieval Translations and Cultural Discourse encapsulates the aim of the study: to investigate what happens when texts move from one linguistic realm and one cultural sphere to another. The subject of the study are French texts preserved in Middle English and Old Norse-Icelandic versions in a "specific form, in a particular region, and within a certain reading community" and which can "provide information about the reading habits and scribal practices of that community" (p. 16). The study focuses on the fortunes in translation of Marie de France's Lais, La Chanson de Roland, Chrétien de Troyes's Yvain, and Partonopeu de Blois.

The first chapter, "The Imperial Implications of Medieval Translations" (pp. 24-52), is devoted chiefly to one of the Middle English versions of Marie de France's Arthurian lay Lanval, namely Thomas Chestre's late fourteenth-century Sir Launfal. The author succeeds in demonstrating how Sir Launfal has been adjusted to its new reading community by implicitly addressing English social conditions. The transformation of the French text reveals a shift from the mainly aristocratic French audience to a middle-class English audience. This also occurs in the Middle English version of Le Fresne, the Lay le Freine, which is dated to the early fourteenth century and which, while remaining close to the source, also shows signs of deliberate adaptation to its new linguistic and geographical sphere (p. 46). This is not the case in lais translated at the behest of King Hákon Hákonarson (r. 1217-63) of Norway. Oddly enough, Sif Rikhardsdottir does not compare the Norse translations of Lanval and Le Fresne with the Middle English versions, but instead chooses the translations of Guigemar and Laüstic to argue that, unlike the modifications in Sir Launfal and Lay le Freine, those in the Norse translation "signal the effort of integrating the material into an existing tradition rather than supplanting that tradition" (p. 35). Despite some changes occasioned, for example, by the interpolation of explanatory passages for unfamiliar words and concepts, the Norse translation reveals an "effort at accuracy in the transposition of the French material and alludes to the underlying objective of preserving and promoting the chivalric ideology embedded within the structure of the original text" (p. 50).

The two following chapters are devoted to the Runzivals þáttr of Karlamagnús saga and Ívens saga. Although the former is presumed to have been translated in Norway, the colophon of the latter actually names King Hákon Hákonarson as the patron. These texts are extant solely in Icelandic redactions, however, produced at a remove of one hundred fifty to two hundred years from the time of translation. The author notes the chronological discrepancy between translation and transmission, and the difficulty of determining whether changes should be attributed to the original translators or to later Icelandic scribes, but states that "one can nevertheless assume a general commonality in the material's transformation and reception owing to the close connections and common background of the inhabitants" (p. 57). The reference to the common background of Norwegians and Icelanders is well taken, but this does not account for cultural differences between the thirteenth-century Norwegian court and the fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Icelandic countryside or the idiosyncratic scribal practices of individual copyists, be they Norwegian or Icelandic.

The aptly named chapter two, "Behavioural Transformations," explores how the "uniquely culturally determined elements of emotional and social values and psychological conceptualisations" of the Chanson de Roland are "transported across linguistic and cultural borders" in the Runzivals þáttr (p. 56), the oldest manuscript of which is Icelandic and written around 1400. The author points out that the translation adheres closely to the redaction of the Chanson de Roland in the Anglo-Norman Digby manuscript, and proposes an "intended act of transference of the material into its new linguistic form as opposed to a creative re-engagement with...