Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England.
- Author/Editor
- Hurley, Mary Kate.
- Title
- Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England.
- Published
- Hurley, Mary Kate. Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 2021. Pp. 125-50.
- Review
- Hurley's Chapter 4, entitled "Becoming England: The Northumbrian Conversion in Trevet, Gower, and Chaucer," centers around the "Man of Law's Tale" and Chaucer; Trevet and Gower present "versions" that demonstrate "an emerging engagement--beyond Chaucer himself--with the Pre-Conquest past during the fourteenth century" (125), thereby helping Hurley find answers to her question driving the chapter: "By examining the translation effects that appear in the 'Man of Law's Tale,' we can begin to see how imagined textual communities are affected by post-Conquest translation. How does a new English vernacular change the composition of such textual communities?" (127) Her answer, found by juxtaposing Trevet's, Gower's, and Chaucer's narratives, is a unifying idea of "an emerging sense of Engelond" (128) discernible through their differences. Per her book's title, Hurley's discussion of Trevet's Constance and Chaucer's Custance highlights the ability to speak languages other than her native (Roman) Latin, pointing out the cultural "homogenization" implicit in giving her speech in vernaculars--in contrast to Hermengyld who, in both Trevet's and Gower's tales, is allowed to register herself as Saxon via linguistic code-switching (139). Gower, Hurley notes, eludes the complexities involved in moving a heroine through several linguistic environments by keeping Constance "profoundly silent" (137): indeed, because "language (like translation) is . . . a means to an end" for Gower, readers are given only the results of Constance's speaking, both to the Saxons and to the Syrian merchants, not her words themselves (138). It is a technique which--in a way--brings Gower closer to Trevet than to Chaucer (139). It is perhaps worth noting that (131, n. 25) Hurley takes her texts of both Trevet and Gower from Correale and Hamel, "Sources and Analogues of the Canterbury Tales." [RFY. Copyright. John Gower Society. eJGN 43.2]
- Date
- 2021
- Gower Subjects
- Language and Word Studies
Sources, Analogues, and Literary Relations
Confessio Amantis