Post Conquest translators and their work

征服后的翻译家和他们的工作

• 批准号: 2582140
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University College London
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Studentship
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2021 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=studentship-2582140
• 关键词: Post; Conquest; translators; their; work

This project brings into focus the pioneering authors - including women - writing in French for the very first time in medieval Britain after the Norman Conquest. How could such an immense break from the dominant written language, Latin, be explained and defended? My research examines an understudied set of saints' lives, the most prolific genre in the period, to explore what these writers tell us about their own work. The striking self-consciousness of these texts begs the question: what if they were not only telling the stories of the extraordinary lives of saints but also of their own unprecedented literary production?The flourishing of Anglo-Norman, the dialect of French spoken and written in Britain after the Norman Conquest, in the 12th and 13th centuries was founded on the translation of Latin texts into the vernacular. This was a process encouraged by the Angevin court under Henry II, conceptualised as a movement of knowledge from antiquity to medieval Britain, and designed to consolidate royal power through the durability of the written word. This self- perceived need for intellectual, social and political justification expressed itself acutely in the vernacular literature of the period. The aim of my project is to examine how Anglo-Norman authors were uniquely and prematurely conscious of the function of the written text as a transmitter of knowledge in a fixed and verifiable form. In a period where written documentation was becoming progressively more important (M.T Clanchy, 1993), and where texts were moving out of the monasteries to which they had previously been confined, manuscripts were becoming increasingly a part of both religious and lay spheres. I will seek to demonstrate that through the work of authors and scribes, Anglo-Norman translation was a project conscious of its own need for legitimation in the written text.Nowhere can this consciousness be seen more clearly than in Anglo-Norman saints' lives: their production coincided with the practice of translatio developing in this cultural and geographic sphere, and their key function consisted of making edifying Latin texts available to a lay public through the use of the vernacular. This culturally determined concern with the transmission of knowledge enabled by translation meant that saints were particularly useful to the project of self-legitimation, as mediums through which insular authors could negotiate their relationship to textual authority. My corpus would consist of Anglo-Norman saints' lives (around 30 texts), an understudied but integral part of medieval French literature. Researching this topic beside 12th century historiography, particularly Geoffroy Gaimar, Wace and Benoit de Sainte-Maure, would be highly productive, as it developed in the same period beside hagiography, and both textual corpora, by virtue of their context of production and historical interests, are inseparable.Drawing on the literary perspectives of Françoise Laurent and Emma Campbell alongside the more philological approach of Anglo-Norman scholars such as Delbert Russell, I will examine the ways in which the translation of Latin into the vernacular involved specific literary techniques with the aim of amplifying the translator's authority: drawing attention to a Latinate source (not always the translator's own), repeated claims for faithful translation, historical accuracy and direct experience of events in saints' lives, the early development of the topos of the lost manuscript book rediscovered or given to the hagiographer by a religious superior, intertextual references to vernacular insular literary production, and translators naming themselves and associating their role as translators with the project of learning and memorialisation instilled by their works.

这个项目聚焦了诺曼征服后中世纪英国第一次用法语写作的先驱作家-包括女性。如何解释和捍卫这种与占统治地位的书面语言拉丁语的巨大决裂？我的研究考察了一组未被充分研究的圣徒的生活，这是这一时期最多产的体裁，以探索这些作家告诉我们关于他们自己的作品。这些文本中引人注目的自我意识引出了一个问题：如果它们不仅讲述了圣徒非凡的生活，而且还讲述了它们自己前所未有的文学作品，那会怎么样？盎格鲁-诺曼语（英语：Anglo-Norman）是诺曼征服后在英国使用和书写的法语方言，它在12世纪和13世纪的繁荣是建立在将拉丁文本翻译成本地语言的基础上的。这是亨利二世治下的安茹宫廷所鼓励的一个过程，被概念化为从古代到中世纪英国的知识运动，旨在通过书面文字的持久性来巩固皇家的权力。这种自我感觉到的对知识、社会和政治正当性的需要，在这一时期的白话文学中得到了尖锐的表达。我的项目的目的是研究盎格鲁-诺曼作家是如何独特地和过早地意识到书面文本的功能，作为一个固定的和可验证的形式的知识传播者。在一个时期，书面文件变得越来越重要（M.T Clanchy，1993），并在文本正在移动的寺院，他们以前被限制，手稿越来越成为宗教和世俗领域的一部分。我将试图通过作者和抄写员的工作来证明，盎格鲁-诺曼翻译是一个意识到自己需要在书面文本中合法化的项目，这种意识在盎格鲁-诺曼圣徒的生活中表现得最为明显：他们的生产与在这个文化和地理范围内发展的传统习俗相吻合，他们的主要功能是通过使用本地语言向普通公众提供有启发性的拉丁文文本。这种文化决定的对翻译促成的知识传播的关注意味着，圣徒对自我合法化的项目特别有用，作为媒介，孤立的作者可以通过它来谈判他们与文本权威的关系。我的语料库将包括盎格鲁-诺曼圣徒的生活（约30个文本），一个研究不足，但中世纪法国文学的组成部分。在世纪的历史学，特别是Geoffroy Gaimar，Wace和Benoit de Sainte-Maure旁边研究这个主题，将是非常富有成效的，因为它在同一时期发展，除了圣徒传，两个文本语料库，凭借其生产背景和历史利益，是不可分割的。借鉴弗朗索瓦丝洛朗和艾玛坎贝尔的文学观点，以及盎格鲁-撒克逊的语言学方法，诺曼学者，如德尔伯特罗素，我将研究如何将拉丁文翻译成白话涉及具体的文学技巧，目的是扩大译者的权威：引起人们对拉丁语来源的注意（并不总是译者自己的），反复声称忠实的翻译，历史的准确性和直接经验的事件，在圣徒的生活，早期发展的主题丢失的手稿书重新发现或给予hagiographer由宗教上级，互文参考白话岛屿文学生产，和翻译命名自己和关联的作用，作为翻译与项目的学习和纪念灌输他们的作品。