Early Theories of Translation

by Flora Ross Amos

And so bifel upon a day,
Forsothe as I you telle may
Sir Thopas wolde outride,

and

The briddes synge, it is no nay,
The sparhauke and the papejay

may easily be paralleled by passages containing references to source.

A good illustration from almost every point of view of the significance and lack of significance of the appearance of these phrases in a given context is the version of the Alexander story usually called The Wars of Alexander. The frequent references to source in this romance occur in sporadic groups. The author begins by putting them in with some regularity at the beginnings of the passus into which he divides his narrative, but, as the story progresses, he ceases to do so, perhaps forgets his first purpose. Sometimes the reference to source suggests accuracy: "And five and thirty, as I find, were in the river drowned."[80] "Rhinoceros, as I read, the book them calls."[81] The strength of some authority is necessary to support the weight of the incredible marvels which the story-teller recounts. He tells of a valley full of serpents with crowns on their heads, who fed, "as the prose tells," on pepper, cloves, and ginger;[82] of enormous crabs with backs, "as the book says," bigger and harder than any common stone or cockatrice scales;[83] of the golden image of Xerxes, which on the approach of Alexander suddenly, "as tells the text," falls to pieces.[84] He often has recourse to an authority for support when he takes proper names from the Latin. "Luctus it hight, the lettre and the line thus it calls."[85] The slayers of Darius are named Besan and Anabras, "as the book tells."[86] On the other hand, the signification of the reference in its context can be shown to be very slight. As was said before, the writer soon forgets to insert it at the beginning of the new passus; there are plenty of marvels without any citation of authority to add to their credibility; and though the proper name carries its reference to the Latin, it is usually strangely distorted from its original form. So far as bearing on the immediate context is concerned, most of the references to source have little more meaning than the ordinary tags, "as I you say," "as you may hear," or "as I understand."

Apart, however, from the matter of context, one may make a rough classification of the romances on the ground of these references. Leaving aside the few narratives (e.g. Sir Percival of Galles, King Horn) which contain no suggestion that they are of secondary origin, one may distinguish two groups. There is, in the first place, a large body of romances which refer in general terms to their originals, but do not profess any responsibility for faithful reproduction; in the second place, there are some romances whose authors do recognize the claims of the original, which is in such cases nearly always definitely described, and frequently go so far as to discuss its style or the style to be adopted in the English rendering. The first group, which includes considerably more than half the romances at present accessible in print, affords a confused mass of references. As regards the least definite of these, one finds phrases so vague as to suggest that the author himself might have had difficulty in identifying his source, phrases where the omission of the article ("in rhyme," "in romance," "in story") or the use of the plural ("as books say," "as clerks tell," "as men us told," "in stories thus as we read") deprives the words of most of their significance. Other references are more definite; the writer mentions "this book," "mine author," "the Latin book," "the French book." If these phrases are to be trusted, we may conclude that the English translator has his text before him; they aid little, however, in identification of that text. The fifty-six references in Malory's Morte d'Arthur to "the French book" give no particular clue to discovery of his sources. The common formula, "as the French book says," marks the highest degree of definiteness to which most of these romances attain.

An interesting variant from the commoner forms is the reference to Rom, generally in the phrase "the book of Rom," which appears in some of the romances. The explanation that Rom is a corruption of romance and that the book of Rom is simply the book of romance or the book written in the romance language, French, can easily be supported. In the same poem Rom alternates with romance: "In Rome this geste is chronicled," "as the romance telleth,"[87] "in the chronicles of Rome is the date," "in romance as we read."[88] Two versions of Octavian read, the one "in books of Rome," the other "in books of ryme."[89] On the other hand, there are peculiarities in the use of the word not so easy of explanation. It appears in a certain group of romances, Octavian, Le Bone Florence of Rome, Sir Eglamour of Artois, Torrent of Portyngale, The Earl of Toulouse, all of which develop in some degree the Constance story, familiar in The Man of Law's Tale. In all of them there is reference to the city of Rome, sometimes very obvious, sometimes slight, but perhaps equally significant in the latter case because it is introduced in an unexpected, unnecessary way. In Le Bone Florence of Rome the heroine is daughter of the Emperor of Rome, and, the tale of her wanderings done, the story ends happily with her reinstatement in her own city. Octavian is Emperor of Rome, and here again the happy conclusion finds place in that city. Sir Eglamour belongs to Artois, but he does betake himself to Rome to kill a dragon, an episode introduced in one manuscript of the story by the phrase "as the book of Rome says."[90] Though the scenes of Torrent of Portyngale are Portugal, Norway, and Calabria, the Emperor of Rome comes to the wedding of the hero, and Torrent himself is finally chosen Emperor, presumably of Rome. The Earl of Toulouse, in the romance of that name, disguises himself as a monk, and to aid in the illusion some one says of him during his disappearance, "Gone is he to his own land: he dwells with the Pope of Rome."[91] The Emperor in this story is Emperor of Almaigne, but his name, strangely enough, is Diocletian. Again, in Octavian, one reads in the description of a feast, "there was many a rich geste of Rome and of France,"[92] which suggests a distinction between a geste of Rome and a geste of France. In Le Bone Florence of Rome appears the peculiar statement, "Pope Symonde this story wrote. In the chronicles of Rome is the date."[93] In this case the word Rome seems to have been taken literally enough to cause attribution of the story to the Pope. It is evident, then, that whether or not Rome is a corruption of romance, at any rate one or more of the persons who had a hand in producing these narratives must have interpreted the word literally, and believed that the book of Rome was a record of occurrences in the city of Rome.[94] It is interesting to note that in The Man of Law's Tale, in speaking of Maurice, the son of Constance, Chaucer introduces a reference to the Gesta Romanorum:

In the old Romayn gestes may men fynde
Maurice's lyf, I bere it not in mynde.

Such vagueness and uncertainty, if not positive misunderstanding with regard to source, are characteristic of many romances. It is not difficult to find explanations for this. The writer may, as was suggested before, be reproducing a story which he has only heard or which he has read at some earlier time. Even if he has the book before him, it does not necessarily bear its author's name and it is not easy to describe it so that it can be recognized by others. Generally speaking, his references to source are honest, so far as they go, and can be taken at their face value. Even in cases of apparent falsity explanations suggest themselves. There is nearly always the possibility that false or contradictory attributions, as, for example, the mention of "book" and "books" or "the French book" and "the Latin book" as sources of the same romance, are merely stupidly literal renderings of the original. In The Romance of Partenay, one of the few cases where we have unquestionably the French original of the English romance, more than once an apparent reference to source in the English is only a close following of the French. "I found in scripture that it was a barge" corresponds with "Je treuve que c'estoit une barge"; "as saith the scripture" with "Ainsi que dient ly escrips";