1 - The Translator's Prologue: Latin and French Antecedents

Summary

THE NOTION THAT a speech, play or other work should begin with an explanatory preamble may have its origins (if origins there must be) in Greek theatre and oratory. The innovation of a prologue to introduce Greek drama is attributed to Thespis (c. 534 bc), and the development of Attic oratory in the fifth century bc resulted in the compiling of stock openings for forensic and political speeches. The Greco-Roman legacy bequeathed a number of prologue models to medieval writers, and the scholastic and ‘Aristotelian’ prologues became particularly widespread in Latin texts from the later twelfth century onwards. Latin prologues were in turn available to vernacular writers, who were obliged to consider the extent to which these models were suited to the differing concerns of vernacular texts. The scholastic prologue model, however, became particularly influential in the thirteenth century; vernacular authors from all genres were anxious to borrow terminology and topoi from the scholastic tradition in order to gain a measure of high seriousness, professionalism and intellectual gravitas.

THE LATIN PROLOGUE TRADITION AND THE GROWTH OF TRANSLATION-CONSCIOUSNESS

THE IMMEDIATE ANTECEDENT of the Latin literary prologue can be found in the exordium, prooemium and principium (the terms are used interchangeably) of classical oratory. Classical poetic theory was also a significant influence on the poetic theory of the Middle Ages, and this extended indirectly to the composition of prologues. Cicero's De Inventione, the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium, Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria and Horace's Ars Poetica were particularly influential. In De Inventione Cicero defines the function of the exordium, using a formula which is echoed in all major rhetorical treatises throughout the Middle Ages:

Exordium est oratio animum auditoris idonee comparans ad reliquam dictionem; quod eveniet si eum benivolum, attentum, docilem confecerit.

[An exordium is a passage which brings the mind of the auditor into a proper condition to receive the rest of the speech. This will be accomplished if he becomes well-disposed, attentive, and receptive.]

As Copeland observes, classical literary theory typically addresses translation only as a smaller part of the larger disciplines of grammar and rhetoric.