Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Medieval Merlin Tradition in France and Italy: Prophecy, Paradox, and Translatio

The Medieval Merlin Tradition in France and Italy: Prophecy, Paradox, and Translatio

Chuhan Campbell, Laura

Hardcover

Series: Gallica, Book 42

Literary Criticism

ISBN10: 184384480X
ISBN13: 9781843844808
Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Published: Nov 17 2017
Pages: 224
Weight: 1.08
Height: 0.56 Width: 6.14 Depth: 9.21
Language: English
Ideas of translation and adaptation in the middle ages investigated through the lens of the Merlin tradition.

The medieval figure of Merlin is intriguing, enigmatic, and riddled with contradictions. Half human, half devil, he possesses a supernatural knowledge that allows him to prophesy the future. This book examines the reinterpretationof Merlin's character in French and Italian Arthurian literature, in which chivalric romance and political prophecy become increasingly intertwined. As the Merlin story crosses the fluid cultural and linguistic boundaries between vernacular dialects on either side of the Alps, the protagonist accumulates histories, futures, and discourses from multiple texts within his omniscient knowledge. From his first appearance in Geoffrey of Monmouth's HistoriaRegum Britanniae, through thirteenth-century French romance, to fifteenth-century Venice, Merlin is the voice of political and spiritual truths that originate beyond the sphere of human comprehension. The study also shows howthe conversion of Merlin's prophetic speech from his omniscient mind into human languages parallels the work of the medieval translator. At the same time, the transmission of the Merlin story between vernacular French and Italiandialects presents an alternative model of translation, one that relies not on the displacement of previous texts, but instead on the accretion of information from text to text.

Laura Chuhan Campbell is Assistant Professor of French at Durham University.

Also in

Literary Criticism

View All