The medieval romance: an endless cultural transfer

Abstract

French romances come from the desire to understand the ancients in vernacular language. Medieval novelists are firstly translators. The “mise en roman”, as old French texts say, is a transfer which has required huge efforts to adapt the ancient stories in their linguistic, formal and cultural aspects to the requirements of the courtly audience. Nowadays these works are hard to understand, even for a native speaker. They are practically unattainable for the foreign readership. How can contemporary translators continue the cultural transfer initiated by medieval clerks, in order to keep alive some of the most ancient pages of the Western civilisation? Our study aims to enlighten three moments in space-time. The first part deals with the notion of translatio studii in the Middle Ages. Next, a survey led through 24 paratexts of modern French versions of medieval French romances questions the difficulties that can be encountered during an intralingual translation. Finally, the third part concerns the modern Hungarian translation of these old French romances. In this case, difficulties become really challenging, since the problem of temporality is added to the gap of languages.