3 - The Development of the French > English Translator's Prologue

Summary

THE LATIN, FRENCH and Germanic models explored so far indicate that a wide choice of potential options was available to Middle English translators to introduce and conceptualise their work. As was seen in the previous chapter, writers creating French > English translations rather than Latin > English ones faced a new challenge in negotiating and describing the relationship between these two vernaculars. The greater sophistication of Germanic literary theory, which found its expression in England in the highly developed prologues of Ælfred and Ælfric, was not carried forward into post-Conquest England in any obvious manner. In crafting their prologues to these works, Middle English translators appear to have been much more immediately influenced by the French prologues contained in their exemplars, and, more indirectly, by the Latin tradition which informed many of these French prologues. However, the existence of a confident native tradition of Latin > English translation prior to 1066 may have been an underlying factor in the later development of Middle English translation practice, and in the translationawareness expressed in these later prologues.

As is demonstrated by the brief description of the corpus in the Introduction, the prologues and prologue-type passages I have assembled are an extremely heterogeneous group. In terms of genre, there are 2 chronicles (Laȝamon's Brut, Robert Mannyng's Chronicle); 7 romances (Of Arthour and of Merlin, Sir Tristem, Richard Coer de Lyon, The Seege of Troye, William of Palerne, the northern Octavian, The Sowdon of Babylon, Partenope of Blois); 3 Breton lays (Lay le Freine, Sir Orfeo, Sir Launfal); 9 works of religious instruction (The Castle of Love, Cursor Mundi, Handlyng Synne, The Lay-Folks Mass Book, The Northern Homily Cycle, The Ayenbite of Inwyt, The Myrour of Lewed Men, Speculum Vitae, King and Four Daughters), 1 medical treatise (The Knowing of Woman's Kind in Childing), 1 debate (La Belle Dame Sans Merci), 1 balade collection (Exhortacio contra Vicium Adulterii) and 1 story collection (The Legend of Good Women). Most are in verse; 2 are in prose (The Myrour of Lewed Men and The Knowing of Woman's Kind).