Rethinking Medieval Translation: Ethics, Politics, Theory ed. by Emma Campbell and Robert Mills (review)

This wide-ranging and stimulating collection of essays on medieval translation is thoroughly informed by current work in translation studies and theory. Carefully produced and edited, the essays are lucid and accessible. Thematic coherence is enhanced both by the thoughtful Introduction establishing the predominant themes and outlining the varied issues of the essays, and by Simon Gaunt's concluding response. Furthermore, the responses of one essay to another indicate that the volume arises from reflection and discussion between participants.

The term 'medieval translation' in the title must be differentiated from 'modern translation'. As an Anglicisation of Latin translatio, it represents not only linguistic translation or the transfer of physical objects (such as relics in translatio reliquiarum), but also the transfer of power (translatio imperii) and the transfer of knowledge (translatio studii). Within this framework, the significance of the subtitle takes on a heightened importance, and we see how postcolonial theory intersects with translation theory in the work of those influential in the field. Prominently featured in the Introduction and in many of the essays are the ideas of Derrida, Berman, Venuti, and of course the seminal essay of Walter Benjamin 'Die Aufgabe des Übersetzers'.

Marilynn Desmond's essay 'On Not Knowing Greek' examines the dependence of Petrarch and Boccaccio upon the Calabrian Leonzio Pilatus to provide them with access to the ancient Greek poets, particularly Homer. Desmond argues that Pilatus mediated between the ancient languages of the East and West, and that both his identity and his role in the transmission of Greek texts 'dramatize the liminality of translatio in the medieval Mediterranean, that is, the potential of translatio to destabilize rather than fix identities' (p. 22).

In her comparative study 'Translating Lucretia', Catherine Léglu examines the idea of 'ethical non-indifference' in Simon de Hesdin's treatment of the Lucretia story in his translation of Valerius Maximus's Facta et dicta memorabilia, and in the manuscript illustrations accompanying it. The verbal and pictorial translations by de Hesdin and others 'function as a means of exploring, rather than cancelling, the cultural as well as the linguistic gap between the classical, pagan text and the late medieval reader' (p. 83).

That the book is weighted toward medieval French translators will soon become apparent. Miranda Griffin applies a Derridean reading of the transformative processes at work in the Ovide moralisé, Emma Campbell examines another facet of translation between the human world and the divine in her exploration of Rutebeuf 's drama the Miracle de Théophile, while Noah Guynn tackles the problem of medieval understanding of the term catharsis in relation to the politics of Pierre Gringore's Le jeu du Prince des Sotz et de Mere Sotte. In 'The Task of the Dérimeur', Jane Gilbert draws upon the work of Walter Benjamin to illuminate the work of the French prosifiers or dérimeurs, who transformed (or translated) older verse texts into prose form in the same language.

Comparative analysis effectively underpins Robert Mills's essay 'Invisible Translation, Language Difference and the Scandal of Becket's Mother'. Developing the work of Venuti on the ethics of a translator's invisibility, Mills surveys textual and pictorial versions of the legend of Becket's 'heathen' convert mother, which not only undergo 'translation' in various ways through time and place, but also contain within them issues of difference in language and culture that reflect back upon those who adapt and modify the legend. In 'Medieval Fixers', Zrinka Stahuljak takes a position that contrasts with Mills's problematisation of the translator's invisibility. She draws comparisons between the modern 'fixer' or translator/factotum mediating between opposing factions in zones of conflict like Iraq, and 'fixers' as depicted in medieval narratives of cultural conflict, including Pierre Dubois's De recuperatione terre sancte, Froissart's account of the siege of Mahdia in his Chroniques, and Guillaume de Machaut's La prise d'Alixandre.

Multilingualism...