Ovide en français. Genesis, Transformation and Reception of the Ovide Moralisé

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Zusammenfassung (englisch) The aim of the present project is to study the process of acculturation towhich the Latin text of Ovid¿s Metamorphoses is subjected, from the 14thcentury onwards, in the French Ovide moralisé. The investigation begins withthe manuscripts of the Ovide moralisé, which contain glosses and sometimeselaborate iconographic schemes, and, above all, branch into several verydifferent versions. A study of the French manuscripts, as well as ofsubsequent prose and printed versions of the text, enables us to see how theLatin text was understood in the French Middle Ages. Through this study itbecomes clear that the very feature which was most distinctive of the textin the medieval period ¿ namely the ¿moralisations¿ which cause the text toexpand into 72000 lines of octosyllablic couplets ¿ sometimes becomes anobstacle to its diffusion. Some manuscripts of the Ovide moralisé omit themoralisations and so become simple translations of the Metamorphoses, butthey nonetheless help us to see how the Latin text was assimilated into theChristian Middle Ages. Throughout the process of translation, French scribescould find themselves confronted with a text which had become unfamiliar tothem. Today, the manuscripts bear the signs of this lack of understanding,and these sometimes unconscious modifications are especially telling of thetransition from one culture to another.Through the collaboration of art historians, lexicologists, and specialistsin French and Latin literature, we shall through this project gain anunderstanding of the life cycle of a text which allowed one of the foundingworks of western culture to pass from the Classical period to the MiddleAges and then the Renaissance, from Latin to French, from a clerical milieuto a lay readership, from verse to prose, and from manuscripts to printedform. The examination of the language, iconography, glosses and commentariescontained by documents which are still largely unexplored will yield precisestudies which will have an importance extending beyond the domain of theOvide moralisé, for they will shed light on the assimilation of a culturewhich is at once quite different and yet remarkably similar.Atop this concrete goal there is also a further strategic researchobjective. Through this bi-national project ¿ which in fact is alreadyEuropean ¿ we shall strive to expand the borders of medieval literary studyto encompass a new approach towards the ¿pre-modern book¿, in whichspecialists in related disciplines can enter into dialogue.