The Politics of Translation in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance

Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Luise von Flotow, Daniel Russell

• Publisher: University of Ottawa Press
• Year: 2001
• eBook ISBN: 9780776619743
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Medieval & Early Modern Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

The articles in this collection, written by medievalists and Renaissance scholars, are part of the recent "cultural turn" in translation studies, which approaches translation as an activity that is powerfully affected by its socio-political context and the demands of the translating culture. The links made between culture, politics, and translation in these texts highlight the impact of ideological and political forces on cultural transfer in early European thought. While the personalities of powerful thinkers and translators such as Erasmus, Etienne Dolet, Montaigne, and Leo Africanus play into these texts, historical events and intellectual fashions are equally important: moments such as the Hundred Years War, whose events were partially recorded in translation by Jean Froissart; the Political tussles around the issues of lay readers and rewriters of biblical texts; the theological and philosophical shift from scholasticism to Renaissance relativism; or European relations with the Muslim world add to the interest of these articles.

Throughout this volume, translation is treated as a form of writing, as the production of text and meaning, carried out in a certain cultural and political ambiance, and for identifiable - though not always stated - reasons. No translation, this collection argues, is an innocent, transparent rendering of the original.

Jean Froissait's Chroniques: Translatio and the Impossible Apprenticeship of Neutrality

Zrinka Stahuljak
Boston University

In his Chroniques, Jean Froissait (1337–1409) records the history of his time, the Hundred Years War between France and England in which the ruling Valois and Plantagenet dynasties disputed their respective hereditary rights to the French royal throne.¹ The French king Charles IV, the son of Philippe IV le Bel, died without a successor in 1328. While Edward III, the English king, was excluded because he was Philippe le Bel's grandson by his mother Isabelle, Philippe le Bel's nephew, Philippe VI of Valois, was crowned because his inherited right to the throne could be justified through the male bloodline.² In 1337, the year of Froissart's birth, Edward III's challenge to Philippe VI's right of succession to the French throne initiated the Hundred Years War.

Critics agree that in transmitting this conflict, Froissart assumed a neutral tone as well as a position of impartiality toward the warring parties (Ainsworth 1990; Brownlee 2000; Dembowski 1983). It is the goal of this paper to deepen the inquiry into the question of Froissart's historiographic neutrality. Since “the concept of translatio (transference)…is basic for medieval historical theory” (Curtius 1973, 29) as well as for the recording and the transmission of historical events, I propose to examine the status of neutrality of the historian as a self-appointed translator of the war in the different meanings that medieval historiography traditionally assigns to the notion of translation: narrative translation of “ordonner,” linguistic translation and especially the topos of translatio imperii. I will focus on four edited versions of the Prologue to Book I of Froissart's Chroniques and on the episode known as “Voyage en Béarn” to the court of Gaston de Foix, count of Foix and Béarn, in Book III.³

According to Bernard Guenée, since the 1300s the historian has been a tool of political propaganda and of legitimation of new dynasties, and thus, by definition, partial (Guenée 1980, 332–336). During the Hundred Years War, the need for histories devoted to establishing “le bon droit de la dynastie des Valois, en face des prétentions des Plantagenets et des Lancastres” and to showing that “[l]es provinces comme la Normandie et la Guyenne, revendiquées par les Anglais, faisaient partie intégrante du royaume” is particularly strong (Bossuat 1958, 188).⁴ Historians write national histories and “la matière de France est depuis le Xlle siècle la forme privilégiée de l'histoire, celle qui intéresse le plus large public” (Beaune 1985a, 332). On the other side, “generations of Plantagenet…kings [accept] the Arthurian legend as at worst a convenient historical fiction to support their claim for a sovereign England, independent of the French crown… Edward [III] promoted the idea of himself as a new Arthur” (Keiser 1973, 37). Using forged documents and popular propaganda, royal genealogies are promoted as national history in both France and England.⁵

Unlike his contemporaries who write in order to legitimize either the Valois or the Plantagenet dynasty competing for the French throne, Froissart positions himself as a mediator, as a translator, between the two kingdoms and their two rulers. As a historian, Froissart's position is unique in that he is not writing an “official” chronicle (Barber 1981, 24) or a national history. He is using neither written documents nor the royal archives of France to compose the Chroniques (Tucoo-Chala 1981, 124; Ciurea 1970, 279). To explain Froissait's stance of neutrality in the conflict, biographical reasons may be invoked. An indefatigable traveler, Froissart feels as a citizen of the world:

Voirs est que je…ay…fréquenté plusieurs nobles et grans seigneurs, tant en France comme en Angleterre, en Escoce et en autres pais et ay eu congnoissance d'eulx (ms. A, SHF 2:210).

[J]e avoie esté en moult de cours de roys, de ducs, de princes, de contes et de haultes dames (SHF 12:78).

Froissait is at home in both England and France, whose aristocracies share a common transnational, universal culture, formed through marriages and ties of kinship, since the Norman conquest. As a young man, he spent eight years (1361–1369) at Edward Ill's court:

[D]e ma jeunesse je avoie esté nourry en la court et hostel du noble roy Edouard…et de la noble royne Phelippe sa femme, et entre leurs enfans et les barons d'Angleterre qui, pour ce temps, y vivoient et demouroient (L 15:140).

Already fascinated with the ideal of chivalry, he found “a new Arthur” in the king. But what attenuates his predilection for the chivalrous ideals of the English royal court is Froissait's sense of belonging to his country of origin: Hainault. In 1346 John of Beaumont, the count of Hainault, deserted to the French side. In line with the politics of Hainault, Froissart declares himself to be French: “[Conte de Foeis] me receupt moult liement, pour la cause de ce que j'estoie Franchois” (SHF 12:75).⁶ Thus Froissait is personally split between two disparate allegiances, to which a position of neutrality is a particularly well-suited response: He claims to be merely “recording” the events, which are “notablement registré…par juste enquête” (A 1:1),⁷ “douquel costes” (A 1:1), “de quel pays et nation que il soient” (R 35).

In order to maintain this position of neutrality in his historiographic work, Froissait adopts several strategies. First, under the patronage of Edward's wife, Philippa, of the Hainault house, Froissait shifts from verse to prose, distancing himself from the use of rime, which is inadequate in the transmission of truth.⁸ Originally, Froissait had begun a chronicle in verse to which he refers in the Prologue to Book I:

[S]i emprins je assez hardiment…à dittier et à rimer les guerres dessus dites et porter en Angleterre le livre tout compilé, si comme je fis(ms. A, SHF 2:210).

But “cest livre,” the chronicle in verse that he brought to Philippa, “n'est mie examiné ne ordonné si justement que telle chose le requiert. Car fais d'armes…doivent estre donnez et loyaument departis…” (ms. A, SHF 2:210), is something that cannot be achieved in verse form, because:

[L]eurs rimmez et leurs canchons controuvées [de pluiseur gongleour et enchanteour] n'attaindent en riens la vraie matère (SHF 2:265, qtd. in Ainsworth 1990, 46, reference incorrect).⁹

Secondly, he abandons the use of written sources in exchange for oral testimonies. The subsequent prose manuscript versions of the Prologue to Book I attest to the progressive reliance on oral testimonies. Since the roots of the conflict predate his birth, in Book I Froissait relies heavily on the Chronique of his predecessor Jean le Bel. In the first two manuscripts, Amiens and SHF, he acknowledges his debt to Jean le Bel's Chronique: “Voirs est que messires Jehans li Biaus…en fist et cronisa à son tamps aucune cose à se plaisance; et j'ai ce livre hystoriiet et augmenté à le mienne…” (SHF 2:1). But in the last manuscript of Rome, he acknowledges only the use of oral testimonies (R 35). Oral testimonies that he collected from eyewitnesses also form the core of Book III. In its Prologue, Froissart states that in the earldom, “comté,” of Foix and Béarn he was informed by

chevaliers et escuiers…de la greigneur partie des fais d'armes qui estoient avenues en Espaigne, en Portingal, en Arragon, en Navarre, en Engletere, en Escoce et ens es frontieres et limitacions de la Langue d'och (SHF 12:78–9).

Providing as many testimonies as possible, rather than relying on one written narrative, can only support neutrality—the more all-inclusive the narrative is, the more impartial it is. In order to “moy acquitter envers tous, ainsi que drois est” (ms. A, SHF 2:210), “ne m'en vueille pas passer que je n'esclarcisse tout le fait ou cas…tout au long de la matiere” (SHF 13:222, qtd. in Guenée 1981, 279) (my emphasis). These numerous accounts are given orally, in person, “sans que je y envoiasse autre personne que moy” (SHF 12:2). If “truthfulness seems to be linked to oral narration,” as Kevin Brownlee has pointed out (Brownlee 2000, 69), it is because the testimonies are given directly to the historian whose presence legitimizes them: “[L]a vraie information que je ay eu” (R 35). The very orality and variety of testimonies that Froissart collected found the truthfulness of the historiographic text. Thus in the earlier manuscript of Amiens, the responsibility to be truthful was placed exclusively on the witness, “tels gens sont juste imquisiteur et raporteur des besoingnes et…pour leur honeur il n'en oseraient mentir” (A 1:1). But in the later SHF and Rome manuscripts, Froissart inscribes his presence in the collective “on” to further guarantee the faithfulness of his report: “[N]ullement on n'en doit mentir” (R 35).

Reliance on oral testimonies, however, obliges the historian to distinguish between the protagonist, who is interviewing witnesses and the author, who is putting them in writing.¹⁰ In order to support his neutrality, Froissart creates a narrative with a double perspective by splitting his “je” into the “je” of the author, “je Jehans Froissars,” the one who takes it upon himself to “metre en prose et ordonner…la vraie information,” which the “je” of the protagonist, the traveler, collected earlier, “que je ay eu des vaillans honmes, chevalies et esquiers” (R 35).¹¹ Thus Froissart-author has to assume responsibility only for the translation of testimonies into narrative, for their “ordonnance” (SHF 2:210). He claims not to have altered the testimonies he collected:

Et devés savoir que je ai ce livre cronisiet et historiiet, ditté et ordonné apriés et sus la relation faite des dessus dis, a mon loial pooir…

and he neutralizes his own voice:

…sans faire fait ne porter partie ne coulourer non plus l'un que l'autre (R 35).

For Froissait, preserving the multiplicity of voices in their original form guarantees that whatever bias the witnesses may have, that bias is not Froissait's own.¹² Even if the witnesses are distorting the events, Froissart-author is not.

Finally, this narrative translation could not exist without another aspect of historiographic translation: linguistic translation. Froissart interviewed witnesses who related the events of the war in languages other than French, as well as witnesses who spoke French but whose native language was not French. Yet Froissait, the author, does not guarantee the faithfulness of his linguistic translation. His neutrality is upheld precisely by avoiding the issue of language. His silence on the issue mutes the fact that the multiplicity of voices is rendered in only one language, French. Granted, French, the language that Froissait spoke and wrote in, was the universal language of aristocracy and that worked to his advantage.¹³ At the English royal court, as Philippa's clerc, he wrote in French: “Phelippe de Haynnau…à laquelle en ma jeunesse je fus clerc et la servoie de beaulx dittieers et traitiés amoureux” (L 14:2). His fame, perpetuated precisely through this common language, preceded him in his travels: “Lequel conte de Foeis, si trestost comme il me vey…me dist…en bon françois que bien il me congnoissoit, et si ne m'avoit oneques veu mais pluseurs fois avoit bien oy parler de moy” (SHF 12:3). The count of Foix, Gaston, addresses Froissait in the French language, that is in Froissait's language and not “en son gascon” (SHF 12:76). Thus, despite the fact that Froissait has left the borders of the French kingdom, he is still “at home” at the court of Gaston de Foix. In its capacity of being a universal language, French has the ability to create a sense of being at home wherever Froissait is. The very comfort of being at home everywhere in the world precludes any need to question that universality.

On the other hand, French was no longer just a universal language; it was also becoming a marker of belonging. As is generally recognized, during the Hundred Years War, France and England began to irrevocably break away from their common background and inch toward separate national identities. These national identities were not formed in the modern sense of nation identifying itself with one language, one culture and one history, but in the sense of the division of the universal pan-European world into separate kingdoms and the prise de conscience of their difference. Living in the permanent state of war, the population gradually organized itself into a cohesive and integral body in order to better defend itself. As a result, the first signs of national sentiment, of belonging to a larger community, “le pays commun, communis patria”¹⁴ appeared along with signs of local, provincial belonging, “le pays où [le citoyen] était né, patria sua ou propria” (Guznée 1981, 158).¹⁵ The conflicting interests that the two sides had in the French throne and territory slowly disintegrated what used to be one shared Anglo-French culture and transformed it into two cultures in political opposition (Vale 1996, 9–47). Elsewhere, other parties in the conflict started to identify themselves aga...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Translation in the Politics of Culture
• Introduction: The Middle Ages
• Introduction: The Renaissance
• Erasmus, Dolet and the Politics of Translation
• Eusebius' Greek Version of Vergil's Fourth Eclogue
• Translation and Tradition: Reading the Consolation of Philosophy Through King Alfred's Boethius
• Authority Refracted: Personal Principie and Translation in Wace's Roman de Brut
• The Pro Ligario: Volgarizzamento as a Means of Profit
• Jean Froissart's Chroniques: Translatio and the Impossible Apprenticeship of Neutrality
• Translation, Censorship, Authorship and the Lost Work of Reginald Pecock
• Leo Africanus, Translated and Betrayed
• From the Certainties of Scholasticism to Renaissance Relativism: Montaigne, Translator of Sebond
• Montaigne's Traduction of Sebond: A Comparison of the Prologus of the Liber creaturarum with the Préface of the Théologie naturelle
• “Entreat her hear me but a word”: Translation and Foreignness in Titus Andronicus