From England to Iberia: The Transmission of Marginal Elements in the Iberian Translations of Gower's "Confessio Amantis."

Author/Editor
Peréz-Fernández, Tamara.

Title
From England to Iberia: The Transmission of Marginal Elements in the Iberian Translations of Gower's "Confessio Amantis."

Published
Peréz-Fernández, Tamara. "From England to Iberia: The Transmission of Marginal Elements in the Iberian Translations of Gower's Confessio Amantis." In Text, Transmission, and Transformation in the European Middle Ages, 1000-1500, ed. Carrie Griffin and Emer Purcell (Turnhout: Brepols, 2018), 119-40. ISBN: 9782503567402; 9782503567419.

Review
This essay analyzes the manner in which the marginalia in the CA were transferred to the extant manuscripts of the Iberian translations. Pérez-Fernández establishes that the key to understand this transmission is the cultural and intellectual context in which both the Portuguese and Castilian versions of the Gowerian poem were produced: the Latin apparatus of the original text, rather than being translated more literally, as is the case with the English poem, is "reduced to the minimum, whether omitted (in the case of the Latin verses) or translated into the vernacular (the rubrics)" (126). The fact that in Iberia in the late Middle Ages most translations were commissioned by noblemen with limited knowledge of Latin who gave some signs of discomfort with the marginalia from the medieval learned tradition leads Pérez-Fernández to propose that the near-absence of Latin verses (and most of the glosses) in the Portuguese and Castilian manuscripts of the CA was a strategy of adaptation to accommodate the needs of this new readership. [ASH. Copyright. The John Gower Society. eJGN 38.1.]

Date
2018

Gower Subjects
Confessio Amantis
Facsimiles, Editions, and Translations
Manuscripts and Textual Studies