translated in the 13th century by an anonymous author (two manuscripts) and again in the
late 14th century by Jacques de Bauchant, who, like Simon de Hesdin, worked under the
patronage of Charles V. The Jacques de Bauchant translation survives in five
manuscripts. Translations of the Epistolae ad Lucilium, the De remediis fortuitorum, and
Seneca’s De brevitate vitae are found, along with other pseudo-Senecan texts, in an
incunabulum from ca. 1500, the colophon of which attributes the translations to Laurent
de Premierfait. Though this attribution has not been verified, it is evidence that the value
of a translation could depend as much on the celebrity of the translator as on the prestige
of the author of the original work; we compare the enormous popularity of Jean de
Meun’s translation of Boethius’s Consolatio and of the later translation associated with
his name.
We may also note two other works of the sentential tradition. There is an anonymous
translation (uncertain date) of the Sententiae of Publilius Syrus, a text from the 1st
century B.C. that was one of Seneca’s sources for the Epistolae ad Lucilium. The
Distichs of Cato (3rd or 4th c. A.D.) was a popular sentential text in the medieval
schools. At least seven versions exist in French: in Anglo-Norman, by Everard of
Kirkham and Elie of Winchester (12th c.); by Jean de Paris (ca. 1280); by Adam de Suel
(mid-13th c.); by Jean Lefèvre (14th c.); and two anonymous versions from the 15th
century.
Many aspects of the history of translation in medieval French lie beyond the scope of
this survey: translations of patristic sources, the Bible, Greek authors (from Latin
versions), legal documents, and medieval Latin sources. We can, however, draw some
general conclusions. No correlation necessarily exists between the importance of a
curricular author and translation of that author. Horace, for example, was widely read in
the medieval schools as part of the basic curriculum in grammatica; yet there is no extant
French translation of the Ars poetica, the best known of Horace’s texts. The reason is not
difficult to see: the Ars poetica was important for instruction in reading Latin poetry,
especially classical texts, but offered little that was directly relevant to vernacular poetic
traditions, which generated their own arts of poetry. Similarly, it might be surprising that
the Aeneid received so little attention from translators; but this suggests that vernacular
writers were more interested in developing themes and narratives from the Aeneid than in
imitating it as a formal entity. The same may be said of the Thebaid of Statius, the
primary narrative source of the Roman de Thèbes, which was not directly translated into
French. Boethius’s Consolatio, on the other hand, inspired considerable formal interest as
a literary model; in fact, the most successful translations of Boethius are those that
emphasize its poetic features over its difficult philosophical content. But if translation of
poetry is shaped largely by the tastes of vernacular literary milieux, translation of
historical and political texts seems determined by the interests of royal patrons, whose
ideological purposes might be served by possession of texts that had relatively little
currency in academic and literary circles. The translation of classical texts is conditioned
less by the norms of classical study in the medieval schools than by the concerns of
vernacular literary production and of contemporary politics.
Rita Copeland
[See also: ANTIQUITY, ROMANCES OF; BERSUIRE, PIERRE; BOECI;
BOETHIUS, INFLUENCE OF; FET DES ROMAINS; GAGUIN, ROBERT; GOLEIN,
JEAN; MIÉLOT, JEAN; ORESME, NICOLE; OVIDE MORALISÉ; OVIDIAN TALES;
The Encyclopedia 1747