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My dissertation takes a translation studies approach to four medieval works that are both translations and depictions of translation in metaphorical senses (namely, migration and spiritual transformation/conversion): the Exodus of the Old English Illustrated Hexateuch, the Old English verse Exodus, Chaucer’s Man of Law’s Tale, and the Exodus of the Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament. I approach these narratives through a lens of modern translation theory, while at the same time, I investigate the texts with an eye toward classical and medieval theories of translation as espoused by Jerome, Augustine, and King Alfred. By examining these works through a diachronical lens of translation, I show how understanding medieval translation practice can inform our understanding of how the English conceived of themselves in the Middle Ages. The origins of England, or of English Christianity, were a recurring theme throughout the Middle Ages, and the texts in this dissertation all materially touch on narratives related to those origins. The two Old English Exodus translations participate in an early English literary trend that deploys the Exodus narrative as part of a fantasy of re-casting the English takeover of Britain as establishing a new chosen people. This populus israhel mythos, as Andrew Scheil terms it, served as a common thread in Anglo-Saxon self-mythology. In the Middle English period, Chaucer’s revisits the origins of English Christianity in the Man of Law’s Tale, a tale that involves numerous sea-crossings and the unveiling of the hidden inclination toward Christianity among the people of England. Meanwhile, the Exodus of the Middle English Metrical Paraphrase of the Old Testament touches less on English origins and reveals more the emerging English sense of whiteness as a racial category. By exploring the nascent notions of whiteness and its (in)applicability to Moses and Jews at large in the text, I examine how the poet of the Paraphrase was able to call upon contemporary concerns about race and participate in establishing, through difference to the Jews, the idea of English whiteness. Translation was a major component of the development of English literary sensibility and thus the emerging sense of what Englishness is. It is particularly important that these translations narrate versions of the past because the ability to re-shape the past for a present need allowed the English to take ownership of history, just as Augustine’s image of the Israelites taking ownership of the Egyptian treasure after the crossing of the Red Sea sees the Egyptian past superseded by the Hebrews (and the Hebrews superseded by Christianity, following Augustine’s argument). By taking up the treasures of the past on the shoreline of the present, English translators assumed a right of ownership over history and how to use it. Through representations of the past in translation, the English developed a sense of English-ness that they would then export globally. I demonstrate that by translating texts that deal with migrations, conversion, and the origins of the Israelites and of the peoples of the British Isles, the English crafted for themselves an image, a history, a literature that grows and thrives to this day.

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[Typescript] Includes bibliography.

Whole document restricted, see Access Instructions file below for details of how to access the print copy. / Torrent of Portyngale is a late medieval romance, preserved in a single manuscript, MS Chetham’s 8009. It is a complex mix of romance themes: adventure, loss and restoration, family and social status, piety and hypocrisy, woven around the love between Torrent, the orphaned son of a Portuguese earl, and Desonell, heir to the throne of Portugal. Cohesion to so wide a range of thematic material comes from the author’s careful elucidation of the religious and moral significance of the text’s events. While popular literature with a didactic purpose is not uncommon in medieval literature and elsewhere in romance (cf. Sir Amadace), modern criticism has failed to fully appreciate the purposeful combination of the two in Torrent of Portyngale. Torrent is perhaps the most critically neglected member of the Middle English verse romances. This is, in part, due to the state of the text, which suffers from extensive scribal corruption. The first modern edition, by James Halliwell (1842), was also careless and did little to create a good impression. The poem’s most recent editor, Eric Adam (1887), appreciated the shortcomings of Halliwell’s work and sought to restore Torrent. He incorporated evidence from fragmentary early prints of the text and drew on the fruits of nineteenth–century romance scholarship. Despite his good editorial intentions, however, it is now clear that he also made errors and editorial decisions that have coloured the way in which Torrent has been viewed since. The substantial body of twentieth and twenty–first century scholarship on Middle English romance and medieval studies in general has diminished the value of Adam’s edition to the point where it may be regarded as obsolete and a new edition long overdue. This fresh edition of Torrent has been prepared from microfilm of the manuscript. It re–examines the text’s phonology, morphology, syntax, dialect and vocabulary, to indentify and evaluate overlooked clues to help answer such fundamental questions as its date (scholars have dated it from the mid– fourteenth century to the first half of the fifteenth century) and provenance (it has been mapped from East Anglia to South Lancashire). Both the unflattering reputation that Torrent of Portyngale has gathered in modern times and the long–held notion that it is lacking in originality are challenged by the thorough re–examination of the state of the text, its scribes and their practices and evaluating them against prior and current romance scholarship. This new analysis provides a window through which Torrent can be viewed and valued as a product of its time, allowing it to be judged more accurately against its contemporaries and offering many new insights into a text that was clearly once popular.

This dissertation investigates how the Greeks of the Trojan War and Alexander the Great are presented in Old French and Middle English literature. These ancient Greeks are depicted ambiguously: they share some of the characteristics of Jews and Saracens as they are portrayed in medieval literature. The thesis begins with an overview of the frameworks used to define ancient Greek identity. These include the philosophical heritage Greece left to the medieval West; the framework of Jewish identity, encompassing “variable characterization” and the hermeneutics of supersession; and the historical template, seen through the Orosian paradigm of translatio imperii and the Trojan foundation myth. The first chapter examines the Roman de Troie of Benoît de Sainte-Maure. The Greeks of the Trojan War are noble and valorous, but through their gift of the Trojan horse and sack of Troy, they display the treachery associated with post-Incarnation Jews and the cruelty and violence associated with Saracens. Due to the myth that the Trojans founded the Roman people, through their siege of Troy, the Greeks seem like the movers of imperium, the authority to rule, from Troy to Rome, which will eventually become a Christian empire. In the second chapter, I turn to the depiction of Alexander in Thomas of Kent’s Roman de toute chevalerie and the Middle English Wars of Alexander. In the Roman de toute chevalerie, Alexander is ambiguous: he is chivalrous, learned, and even a proto-Christian, though he himself assumes some typical Saracen characteristics. Alexander participates in translatio imperii, holding the right to rule in its Orosian succession and providing a model of empire to Rome. The Wars of Alexander witnesses the changes wrought to Alexander’s depiction in the fourteenth century due to revised views of chivalry, eschatology and crusade. The third chapter investigates the depiction of the Greek Diomede in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, a depiction informed by classical ideas and Chaucer’s depictions of Jews and Saracens in his other works. Diomede is both treacherous and cruel, seen in his seduction of Criseyde, rather than in battle. The ending of the tale posits a proto-Christian identity for Troilus and the Trojans, and suggests that Diomede participates in the supersession of the Greeks by the Trojans. Greeks function as movers of imperium, and are necessary for the beginnings of Christian empire.

This dissertation investigates how the Greeks of the Trojan War and Alexander the Great are presented in Old French and Middle English literature. These ancient Greeks are depicted ambiguously: they share some of the characteristics of Jews and Saracens as they are portrayed in medieval literature. The thesis begins with an overview of the frameworks used to define ancient Greek identity. These include the philosophical heritage Greece left to the medieval West; the framework of Jewish identity, encompassing “variable characterization” and the hermeneutics of supersession; and the historical template, seen through the Orosian paradigm of translatio imperii and the Trojan foundation myth. The first chapter examines the Roman de Troie of Benoît de Sainte-Maure. The Greeks of the Trojan War are noble and valorous, but through their gift of the Trojan horse and sack of Troy, they display the treachery associated with post-Incarnation Jews and the cruelty and violence associated with Saracens. Due to the myth that the Trojans founded the Roman people, through their siege of Troy, the Greeks seem like the movers of imperium, the authority to rule, from Troy to Rome, which will eventually become a Christian empire. In the second chapter, I turn to the depiction of Alexander in Thomas of Kent’s Roman de toute chevalerie and the Middle English Wars of Alexander. In the Roman de toute chevalerie, Alexander is ambiguous: he is chivalrous, learned, and even a proto-Christian, though he himself assumes some typical Saracen characteristics. Alexander participates in translatio imperii, holding the right to rule in its Orosian succession and providing a model of empire to Rome. The Wars of Alexander witnesses the changes wrought to Alexander’s depiction in the fourteenth century due to revised views of chivalry, eschatology and crusade. The third chapter investigates the depiction of the Greek Diomede in Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde, a depiction informed by classical ideas and Chaucer’s depictions of Jews and Saracens in his other works. Diomede is both treacherous and cruel, seen in his seduction of Criseyde, rather than in battle. The ending of the tale posits a proto-Christian identity for Troilus and the Trojans, and suggests that Diomede participates in the supersession of the Greeks by the Trojans. Greeks function as movers of imperium, and are necessary for the beginnings of Christian empire.

This study focuses on the peculiar success that a number of Middle English romances achieved in fourteenth-century England. The romances, Otuel a Knight, Otuel and Roland, Duke Rowland and Sir Otuell of Spayne, Sir Ferumbras, Firumbras, and The Sowdone of Babylone, are narratives about the Saracen knight Otuel or Ferumbras who convert to and fight for Christianity. Given the particular cultural preoccupation with the crusades in Europe and the common vilification of Islam throughout European literature, the popularity of a Saracen hero for the English is unexpected. In accounting for the popularity of these figures and their tales in medieval England, I analyse through a socio-historic approach the concepts of Islam and views of conversion in medieval Europe and England, the particular resonances between English concerns and these narratives, and the converts and conversions in these romances. I approach this subject with an eye to source material from historical documents, comparing the subject matter of the romances to the preoccupations of medieval Christians demonstrated in the historical material. Through this discussion, it becomes clear that the popularity of these romances was assured because of the unwavering promotion and idealizing of the project of Christian reclamation and unification exemplified through the tales. Differently from much scholarship on romances that extensively use Saracen characters, this study demonstrates that the Saracens in these romances become less of an Other and more of a misled aspect of Christianity that must be led back to the church for the complete unification of Christendom to take place.

The representations of the Saracen in medieval English romances have attracted a great deal of critical attention. Earlier interest concentrated on the (mis)perceptions of the nature of Islam and the behaviors of its adherents. For the last two decades, analysis of the imagery of the Saracens has been drawn in new directions. The Saracen is treated as ¡§the other,¡¨ which functions as everything opposed to Christian and the western world. Consequently, ¡§the other¡¨ is often linked to the formation of ¡§the self¡¨ in terms of race, culture, religion or nation. Previous studies implicitly or explicitly respond to the binary paradigm proclaimed by Roland in The Song of Roland that the ¡§Pagans are wrong and Christians are right¡¨ (1015) and prove the inappeasable enmity between the two peoples. Attached to this presumption are two shared supportive beliefs that make the stereotypical imagery and the binary paradigm sustainable. One is that the nature of romance is homogeneous and is constituted by literary conventions. The other is that medieval England was a world which was isolated from the actual encounter with the Saracens and thereby tended to adhere to the design of a propagandistic stereotype of the Continent (Metlitzki 167). This dissertation will attempt to explore the representation of the Saracens in Middle English romances, and at the same time to reshape the understanding of the binary paradigm as well as the two associated supportive beliefs. My approaches to studying the representations of the Saracens in Middle English romances are two: one is intratextual and the other is intertextual. The first is to take Middle English romances as a corpus, to investigate its homogeneity as well as its variants in the representations of the Saracens. The second is to draw the strands of theological, sociological and historical references to shed light on the contextual knowledge of Middle English romances in the representations of the Saracens. Chapter one introduces the binary paradigm and the supportive beliefs. Chapter two explores the representations of the Saracens mainly in Floris and Blancheflour and the medieval ideas regarding magic. Chapter three investigates mainly Josian, the Saracen Princess as the embodiment of the Saracenic intellectual culture in Bevis of Hampton and compares her with other Saracen females and Christian counterparts. Chapter four focuses on the representation of the Sultan of Babylon in the eponymous romance The Sultan of Babylon. He is represented as an offender of God on the one hand; on the other hand, he is a worthy conqueror, a competent leader and a kind father. The complex image modifies the rivalry paradigm. Chapter five concludes that alternative Saracen characters are not as rare as might be supposed and antagonism coexists with tolerance and inclusion in medieval English romances. In Middle English romances, the Saracens are not always evil, wrong and savage. English romancers express their understanding of the Saracens, the curiosity about the Saracenic culture, and give fair appraisals of the Saracens. They reflect ¡§real¡¨ encounters with the Saracens, they suggest the ambiguity of literary conventions and they indicate the possibility of toleration and inclusion. They reshape the paradigm proclaimed by Sir Roland, break down the myth of the unity and continuity of Western civilization and mark the particularity of English romances.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Lehigh University, 2004. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 358-374).