Versions of Medieval France: A Diachronic Socio-Cultural Study of Translation Practices (c.1915—2015)

During the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, the teaching of medieval French texts in Anglophone universities has been gradually supplemented by the use of modern translations as primary texts. It is problematic to interrogate texts in translation as if they were primary sources, especially due to the historical, cultural and philosophical misconceptions that they potentially convey. Our understanding of the effect of the use of translations as primary sources is compounded by a lack of theory around the translation of historical literature into modern languages. There are studies on the effectiveness of translated historical literature in the context of comparative literature, and on the relative complexities of translating medieval and classical languages; but the theoretical and methodological lessons of these studies are almost always applied to modern texts.
This research aims to address that gap and evaluate how shifting modern cultural values affect the translation of medieval French texts and inform our reception of medieval culture through education and wider readership. As a diachronic and synchronic study of three medieval French source texts (La Chanson de Roland, Tristan et Iseut, Aucassin et Nicolette) in translation, this research applies a distinct framework of socio-cultural and descriptive theories of translation to identify the norms at play across four distinct time periods. In so doing, it addresses the following questions:
- What are the cultural norms at play in each time period and how do they affect the content of the translation?
- To what extent do translators’ practices of domestication and foreignization of the medieval period constitute systems of activity?
- How do these modern translations affect our perception of the medieval period?

The research demonstrates that there is an active subsystem of translation around historical literature and that explicit or implicit norms of behaviour within this system have a distinct impact on the public reception of medieval French texts. The study has important implications for the fields of comparative literature and languages in higher education and calls for further investigation through wider-ranging studies of translatorial action.