Vernacular Edens

Tropes of Translation in Medieval European Fictions

Simone Marchesi

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English

University of Toronto Press
14 February 2025

Literature: history & criticism; Literary studies: classical, early & medieval

Late-medieval European vernacular literature defined itself as the redeployment of classical and post-classical antecedents in new cultural coordinates. Many authors of narrative and poetic fiction between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries resisted the idea that moving a text from one language to another produces a loss of meaning, or, as today's idiom goes, that something always gets 'lost in translation'. Rather, they understood the process of vernacular translation as a regenerative cultural practice and often associated it with depictions of luscious and paradisal gardens in their works.

Vernacular Edens presents a systematic study of a literary commonplace, the representation of gardens in medieval fictions, as a lens to understand the theories and practices of translation from Latin to the vernaculars. The book argues that the prominent narrative space that works composed in Old French, Italian, and Middle English give to garden-visit scenes is connected to their vindication of translation as an always-enriching practice. A wide range of texts from Marie de France's Lais to the Roman de la Rose, from Dante's Comedy to Boccaccio's Decameron, and from Petrarch's Griselda to Chaucer's Clerk's and Merchant's Tales provide the body of evidence analysed in the book.

By: Simone Marchesi
Imprint: University of Toronto Press
Country of Publication: Canada
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 25mm
Weight: 1g
ISBN: 9781487558307
ISBN 10: 1487558309
Pages: 316
Publication Date: 14 February 2025
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Simone Marchesi is a professor of French and Italian at Princeton University.

Reviews for Vernacular Edens: Tropes of Translation in Medieval European Fictions

"""Vernacular Edens offers a sophisticated insight into what writing in the vernacular meant for authors of medieval fiction, with particular attention to the optimism that often accompanies their translative acts. Rich in analysis, Simone Marchesi's book presents deft and sophisticated close readings of passages from both the medieval vernacular fictions and Latin texts, including classical literature and Patristic sources, with helpful translations and glosses of the key passages. A significant contribution to the field, this book will be of value to researchers in medieval studies and in translation studies.""--Francesca Southerden, Professor of Italian, University of Oxford"