Project MUSE®: Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures - Latest Articles
https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/550
Project MUSE®: Latest articles in Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures.daily12026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00text/htmlen-USVol. 1 (2012) through current issueLatest Articles: Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval CulturesTWOProject MUSE®Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures2162-95522162-9544Latest articles in Digital Philology: A Journal of Medieval Cultures. Feed provided by Project MUSE®Introduction: Unlikening Translation—Benjaminian Explorations
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979921
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"No translation would be possible," declared Walter Benjamin in his celebrated essay "Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers" ("The Task of the Translator"), "if it were to strive in its ultimate essence for likeness to the original."1 With this claim, Benjamin was not arguing that translation could or should strive to break free from the shaping influence of the original—on the contrary, he insists that the original encloses the very possibility of its translation within itself (9)—but was seeking rather to shift the fundamental relation between translation and original onto a ground other than likeness. That ground is the afterlife into which translation will displace the original. Translation, Benjamin says in one of the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/550/image/coversmallIntroduction: Unlikening Translation—Benjaminian Explorations2026-02-01text/htmlen-USIntroduction: Unlikening Translation—Benjaminian Explorations2026-02-012026TWOProject MUSE®620602026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-01What Chaucer Did to the Roman de la Rose
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979922
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The Middle English translation of parts of the Roman de la Rose is, by convention, printed in editions of the works of Geoffrey Chaucer where the first 1,705 lines are also, by convention, assumed to be by Chaucer. The "authorship question" has at times dominated discussion of this translation and always derives from its structure: although there is no narrative break at line 1705, there is an awkward rhyme ("swote" in line 1706 rhyming with "aboute" in line 1705) which is therefore seen to articulate the end of the Section A of this text (also conventionally called the Romaunt of the Rose). From this point on, there are some dialectal differences and the word "bouton" (bud), translated in the first part as
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/550/image/coversmallWhat Chaucer Did to the Roman de la Rose2026-02-01text/htmlen-USWhat Chaucer Did to the Roman de la Rose2026-02-012026TWOProject MUSE®933282026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-01Likeness and Translation: On Metaphor in Henry Suso
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979923
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Metaphor is named by ancient and medieval teachers of grammar and rhetoric for the linguistic operation it performs: the translation (Latin translatio, Greek μεταφορά, literally "carrying over") of a word from its standard domain of application to another domain where it does not ordinarily belong. This translation, say the same teachers with a consistency bordering on repetitiousness, is predicated on likeness. "Metaphor is when a word is transferred from one thing to another, because it genuinely seems possible to transfer it on account of the likeness [propter similitudinem]" (Rhetorica ad Herennium, ca. 80 BCE);1 "Metaphor is the transference of a word from its appointed use to an unappointed one for emphasis
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/550/image/coversmallLikeness and Translation: On Metaphor in Henry Suso2026-02-01text/htmlen-USLikeness and Translation: On Metaphor in Henry Suso2026-02-012026TWOProject MUSE®1552172026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-01Vernacular Translations of Aristotle's Metaphor in Medieval Italy
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979924
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"These two classes of terms, the proper or regular and the metaphorical—these and no others—are used by everybody in conversation."1 All speakers, as Aristotle posits, use metaphors. But not all speakers, one could argue, use the same terms to discuss metaphors. The Greek μεταφορά, which literally means the act of moving something from one place to another, was typically rendered into Latin as translatio. This term, derived from the verb transferre, meaning "to transfer," faithfully captured and replicated the essence of the Greek original, as demonstrated by discussions of translatio such as those found in Rhetorica ad Herennium and Quintilian.2 Yet, in most European languages, the terminology has standardized
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/550/image/coversmallVernacular Translations of Aristotle's Metaphor in Medieval Italy2026-02-01text/htmlen-USVernacular Translations of Aristotle's Metaphor in Medieval Italy2026-02-012026TWOProject MUSE®1443882026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-01Translating Aries
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979925
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To the God of the Hebrew Bible, astronomy comes easily: "He can tell the number of the stars and call them all by their names" (numerat multitudinem stellarum et omnes nomine suo vocat).1 For everyone else, it takes work and always retains a kernel of mystery. For this reason, Aristotle views the celestial bodies as the object par excellence of the human desire to know. To pursue knowledge is actively to flee ignorance, impelled by "doubts regarding the greatest matters, such as the changes undergone by the moon, those involving the sun and stars, and the origins of the cosmos" (de maioribus dubitantes […] ut de lune passionibus et de hiis que circa solem et astra et de uniuersi generatione).2 As if aware that the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/550/image/coversmallTranslating Aries2026-02-01text/htmlen-USTranslating Aries2026-02-012026TWOProject MUSE®1185352026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-01The Translation as Original: Probing the Making and the Agency of Medieval Documents (Ninth-Thirteenth Century)
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979926
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The quality of being an original document resonates significantly in Roman law, medieval law, and modern diplomatics, yet not only do the characteristics of an original differ in each setting, but the difficulties faced in formulating definitions are ultimately addressed through the use of axiomatic statements.1 In the world of translations, the reassessment of the original's role as the source text for a translated target has been significantly influenced by a twofold challenge. Resistance to the standard notion of translation as a solely linguistic operation has broadened its meaning to include the adaptation of various cultural and sensory elements across different modes of communication and fueled a new
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/550/image/coversmallThe Translation as Original: Probing the Making and the Agency of Medieval Documents (Ninth-Thirteenth Century)2026-02-01text/htmlen-USThe Translation as Original: Probing the Making and the Agency of Medieval Documents (Ninth-Thirteenth Century)2026-02-012026TWOProject MUSE®1615832026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-01Translation and the Work of Assembly in the Medieval Pastourelle
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979927
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The pastourelle is unusually formulaic even for a medieval genre. In these stanzaic narrative songs, often possessing refrains, there is a knight (chevalier) and a shepherdess (pastourelle). Both are usually alone somewhere in the countryside on a gorgeous spring day. He is sexually predatory, he narrates, he has power. He rides by on his horse, looking for pleasure. She is on foot, in a field, often singing to herself, tending livestock. There are various scripts with different outcomes: he tries to seduce her, she resists, sometimes successfully, more often unsuccessfully. In some songs, the resistance turns and she is presented as enjoying herself. In others, she is raped (about 15–18% of all pastourelles).1 The
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/550/image/coversmallTranslation and the Work of Assembly in the Medieval Pastourelle2026-02-01text/htmlen-USTranslation and the Work of Assembly in the Medieval Pastourelle2026-02-012026TWOProject MUSE®1675432026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-01Open Datasets for Medieval Studies: Why We Need Post-Publication Peer Review of Datasets on the Middle Ages
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979928
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Open Datasets for Medieval Studies inaugurates a new genre in scholarly publication for our field: the post-publication review of structured data for subsequent use in research. The combination of framing essays and reviews presented here constitute that genre, which we propose for widespread acceptance and adoption across our interdisciplinary field of study. This genre manifests the difference between the current peer-review practices for forms of scholarly analytical arguments with which we are all familiar and a new genre we must now develop: post-publication peer review of structured (readable and reusable) research data.The ODFMS series in Digital Philology provides the field with an imitable model of how
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/550/image/coversmallOpen Datasets for Medieval Studies: Why We Need Post-Publication Peer Review of Datasets on the Middle Ages2026-02-01text/htmlen-USOpen Datasets for Medieval Studies: Why We Need Post-Publication Peer Review of Datasets on the Middle Ages2026-02-012026TWOProject MUSE®284202026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-01Review and Reuse: The Value of Open Datasets for Medieval Studies
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979929
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Until the 1970s, "digital" meant our hands and our fingers.1 Then, in mid-twentieth century English usage, "digits" began to identify the thing that new computing machines computed.2 Within two decades, digital came to mean numeric and electronic with such cultural and economic force behind it that today, "Can I have your digits?" is never understood to be a request for someone's hand. However, medievalists and mathematicians alike know that the seemingly random use of a word for finger to designate an integer was not incidental but based on millenia of habituation. The practice known as the computus was a system of calculation using the segments of human digits to calculate numbers.3 With the invention of
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/550/image/coversmallReview and Reuse: The Value of Open Datasets for Medieval Studies2026-02-01text/htmlen-USReview and Reuse: The Value of Open Datasets for Medieval Studies2026-02-012026TWOProject MUSE®618232026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-01Datini Letter Collection Metadata and Description of the Datini Letter Materials
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979930
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Files Publicly Available: https://osf.io/mt25a/Contents:Datini Letter Collection Metadata CSVDatini City List with Coordinates CSVColumn Descriptions for the Metadata CSVThe metadata is organized into nineteen columns (see Column Descriptions for the Metadata) including information on the archival shelf-mark, the fondaco the letter is associated with, the sender, receiver, locations, dates of sending and receiving, and additional notes. Not every letter has information in each column, and several columns are more complete than others. All of the data was originally drawn from the old Datini Archive website.2 The website was originally organized with a single, unique URL for each item in the collection, making the
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/550/image/coversmallDatini Letter Collection Metadata and Description of the Datini Letter Materials2026-02-01text/htmlen-USDatini Letter Collection Metadata and Description of the Datini Letter Materials2026-02-012026TWOProject MUSE®379122026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-01Data Review and Field Contextualization of Adam Franklin-Lyons and Pavel Oleinikov, Datini Letter Collection Metadata
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979931
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The Datini papers, held by the Archivio de Stato di Prato (hereafter ASPo), are a historical source for which digital tools and the transformation of archival material into abstract data are uniquely appropriate. Francesco di Marco Datini was not part of an important family, nor did he represent a well-established merchant firm. Nevertheless, he built a highly successful trading company that was active around the western Mediterranean basin in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Datini had agents or sub-companies in many critical cities and, at his death, he left behind huge personal archive containing a wide variety material (notarial deeds, testaments, account books, etc.). The crown jewel of his
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/550/image/coversmallData Review and Field Contextualization of Adam Franklin-Lyons and Pavel Oleinikov, Datini Letter Collection Metadata2026-02-01text/htmlen-USData Review and Field Contextualization of Adam Franklin-Lyons and Pavel Oleinikov, Datini Letter Collection Metadata2026-02-012026TWOProject MUSE®341512026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-01Data Visualizations and Review of Adam Franklin-Lyons and Pavel Oleinikov, Datini Letter Collection Metadata
https://muse.jhu.edu/article/979932
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I am, by training, a Roman archaeologist who has, by necessity, become a digital humanist. A waystation on that journey was a long engagement with social network analysis, a methodology for working with historical data that analyzes relationships such as those between people, places, groups, or objects. I was for many years outside the academy and so often the only data that I could access was metadata describing collections I would have otherwise loved to explore. I learned to play with other researchers' metadata if only to try to keep my hand in the game. For the purposes of this review, I approach the Datini metadata in that spirit: what can I do with the metadata that might highlight new possibilities for
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Project MUSE®https://muse.jhu.edu/2026-05-11T00:00:00-05:00https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/550/image/coversmallData Visualizations and Review of Adam Franklin-Lyons and Pavel Oleinikov, Datini Letter Collection Metadata2026-02-01text/htmlen-USData Visualizations and Review of Adam Franklin-Lyons and Pavel Oleinikov, Datini Letter Collection Metadata2026-02-012026TWOProject MUSE®248672026-05-11T00:00:00-05:002026-02-01