Rhetoric, hermeneutics and translation in the Middle Ages: academic traditions and vernacular texts (review)

Reviews 193 Contreni's research on the role of Irish scholars in the Carolingian world, focussing on John Scottus Eriugena and the Irish 'colony' at Laon (nos. VI, VIII-X). A n interesting short piece deals with the ninth-century evidence for the legend that the Irish originated in Egypt (no. XVII). In this collection, the general and the particular are nicely balanced, despite a certain amount of overlap and repetition in the general studies. Because the original papers were scattered in a range of publications, many of which were fairly specialized, it is especially useful to have them more widely available in this thematic form. Toby Bunows The Library University of Western Australia Copeland, R., Rhetoric, hermeneutics and translation in the Middle Ages: academic traditions and vernacular texts, (Cambridge studies in medieval literature), Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991; cloth; pp. xiv, 295; R.R.P. AUS$120.00. This extremely well-researched and scholarly production continues the exceUent series in medieval literature published by Cambridge University Press. Medievalists interested in the history of vernacular translation (especially French, English and German) will find much food for thought in Copeland's study, as wiU literary theorists and those interested in medieval education and rhetoric. It is a wide-ranging work which goes far beyond a concern with the pragmatics of translation in the Middle Ages to the more fundamental question of medieval critical practices, showing finally how the discourse of criticism defines the status of both Latin and vernaculartextualityin this period. The very nature of medieval commentary is developed at length. Copeland's main thesis is that medieval translation, and she is referring specifically to vernacular translations of classical Latin texts, cannot be understood without reference to the traditional systems of rhetoric and hermeneutics which were so important in defining its practice. H o w translation was also a primary vehicle for vernacular participation in the cultural privilege of Latin academic discourse is the other area in which a contribution to knowledge is effected by this author's dense study. Finding one's way around this work, which treats of topics overlapping into many domains of medieval scholarship, is facilitated by a two-part index: an Index of names andtitlesand a General index. The latter gives the reader access to those parts of thetextdealing with rhetorical concepts (abbreviatio, inventio, enarratio and the like), historical topics (for example, bdingual teaching in the Middle Ages and rhetorical compendia of late antiquity), and well-known recurring themes (accessus ad audores, confusio linguarum,fidus interpres, and 194 Reviews translatio studii). There are, of course, detailed entries with organized subsections for hermeneutics, and translation. The first three chapters trace the changing fortunes of rhetoric and grammar from Roman times to the Middle Ages. A U the insights due to m o d e m semiotic and critical theory are caUed upon to explain to the reader these vicissitudes. The usual quotations from Cicero, Horace, QuintiUan, St Jerome and St Augustine relating to how translation was conceived in classical and patristic times are conveniently canvassed. However, they emerge from the generaUy acute analysis here bearing new emphases. Copeland regularly penetrates behind the face value usually attributed to these statements to show how, often through misinterpretation, the conceptions of translation held by theoretical authors in classical times and by those in the early Middle Ages were worlds apart. In a nutshell, grammar, through the previously debased agency of enarratio poetarum, had displaced rhetoric by the time we reach the Middle Ages, that same rhetoric which for Quintilian and Cicero had represented the highest art, the fulfilment even of phdosophy. After examing in the third chapter how Latin exegetical commentary in the Middle Ages appropriated many of the tools and textual strategies of rhetoric, Copeland explores the work of Notker of St Gall (German) as well as the Ovide moralise" (French) to show how vernacular exegesis and paraphrase, introducing the factor of an interlingual movment ressembled their Latin counterpart by carrying over the motive of contestation that is inscribed in hermeneutical practice. Perhaps the most interesting idea to come out of this fourth chapter is Copeland's identification of two forms of vernacular translation of the Latin auctores: 'In...