Literary Traditions in the 14th Century
From Wyclif
Translatio in Medevial Literary Tradition
The act of translation (“translatio”) is a common literary practice of the late Middle Ages. For instance, Chaucer’s Clerk Tale, the retelling of the story of Griselda, is a translation in a long history of translations of a folktale popular in the fourteenth century. The story is found in Boccoccio’s Decameron and was translated into Latin by Petrarch twenty years after Boccoccio’s inscription of the story. Chaucer’s translation is from Petrarch’s Latin manuscript and an anonymous French prose translation of Petrarch’s Latin, Le Livere Griseldis (Dimshaw 132).
In the Clerk’s Tale, because Chaucer is working with a pre-established body of work, he is operating within the parameters of late medieval rhetorical/ poetic treatises that made translation the preferred literary activity of the time. While Chaucer adheres to the prescriptive rhetorical theory, he is also challenging it and subverting it by shifting key aspects of the tale to change or question the prior meanings associated with the tale; in fact, he seems pointedly to be looking at whether “translatio” can bring about “truth” or new meaning without “inventio”, an aspect of writing medieval scholar William McClellan explains as significantly undervalued in late medieval times (McClellan 464-465). McClellan clarifies the methodologies of medieval theory thus: “[in] late medieval rhetorical/ poetical theory. . . all a poet/ rhetor had to do was locate a theme in a pre-existing body of material and rework it through a stylistic procedure of verbal figuration” (McClellan 463). Accordingly, the “stylistic procedure” of the writer was what was valued in the late Middle Ages; the rhetorical abilities of a writer, the ability to make pleasing rhyme schemes and to use language effectively and persuasively to better illuminate the important themes of existing stories, far outweighed the importance of invention of new stories and themes in this time period. In fact, McClellan explains, the possibility of the creation of new meaning was so undervalued as to be ignored completely by medieval rhetorical theorists; “Medieval rhetoricians limited their explicit theorizing to the external changes in the linguistic body of prior utterances and had nothing to say about the consequences” (467). Thus, if invention (“inventio” in rhetorical theory) was of little or no importance in to the theorists of the late Middle Ages, this attitude surely influenced the writers of the age.
Of course, because Chaucer was working to translate Latin texts into English, the vernacular, he holds a distinctive place in the hierarchical literary structure. As Campbell explains,
Translation as a medieval academic discourse in the vernacular is thus situated somewhat ambivalently in relation to traditional disciplinary and linguistic hierarchies. On one hand, vernacular translation appropriates and reinforces the value systems implicit in a textual tradition centered on Latin models, both offering access to an older, more arcane Latin culture and reproducing the systems that sustain an academic tradition based upon that culture. On the other hand, it is the vernacular (rather than the Latin) which is thereby inscribed as the language of cultural authority, upsetting the linguistic hegemony that tradition ally invests Latin with the greater cultural value than vernacular discourse. (Campbell 197)
The idea that the “greater cultural value” exists in Latin texts is one which Chaucer seems to be adamant about refuting in his own translations. In fact, through his systematic reinscription of Latin texts, a process which includes revision and interpretation, Chaucer is subverting the rhetorical traditions which devalue his place in society, as a writer in the vernacular. Instead of “reproducing the systems that sustain an academic tradition” based upon Latin cultural values, Chaucer is challenging and undermining the academic tradition that places such emphasis on limited rhetorical traditions.
Campbell, Emma. “Sexual Poetics and the Politics of Translation in the Tale of Griselda.” Comparative Literature. 2003 Summer; Vol. 55, 3: 191- 216.
McClellan, William. “Bahktin’s Theory of Dialogic Discourse, Medieval Rhetorical Theory, and the Multi-Voiced Structure of the Clerk’s Tale.” Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1989 Fall; 1 (2): 461-497.
