Translation and the Transmission of Culture Between 1300 and 1600

Book excerpt: Translation and the Transmission of Culture between 1300 and 1600 is a companion volume to Medieval Translators and their Craft (1989) and, like Medieval Translators, its aim is to provide the modern reader with a deeper understanding of the early centuries of translation in France. This collection works from the premise that translation never was, and should not now be, envisaged as a genre. Translatio was and continues to be infinitely variable, generating a correspondingly variable range of products from imitatively creative poetry to treatises of science. In the exercise of its multi-faceted set of practices the same controversies occurred then as now: creation or replication? Literality or freedom? Obligation to source or obligation to public? For this reason, the editors avoided periodization, but the volume makes no pretense at temporal exhaustiveness-the subject of translation is too vast. The contributors do, however, aim to shed light on several aspects of translation that have hitherto been neglected and that, despite the earliness of the period, have relevance to our understanding of translation whether in France or generally. Like its companion, this collection will be of interest to scholars of translation, textual studies, and medieval transmission of texts.