Some Observations on the First Middle English Translation of the Revelation of John
Keywords:
Apocalypse, middle english, Translation StudiesAbstract
The Revelation of John represents one of the most popular texts of medieval Europe. This popularity, undoubtedly fuelled by fears and expectations of the year one thousand, is reflected not only in the presence of millenarian themes in contemporary literature, but also and above all in an extremely rich manuscript tradition in Latin and vernacular languages. Medieval England is no exception, except for the fact that the earliest translations are in Anglo-Norman, and the first copies in Middle English are not available until the middle of the fourteenth century. The most significant work in this regard is certainly the so-called Wycliffe translation, which deviates from the Anglo-Norman model. However, it would not have been possible without being preceded by various attempts, of which we still have evidence. This article intends to focus on the first translation that has been handed down to us, trying to highlight the translation practices employed in terms of syntactic, lexical and morphological choices. As a matter of fact, although it is a very adherent translation to the Anglo-Norman version, it shows interesting and strategical attempts to adapt the text to the Middle English language for a successful rendition of the apocalyptic message.
References
Arnold, Thomas H. 1869-1871. Selected English Works of John Wyclif. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Arteaga, Deborah, Herschensohn, Julia. 2016. “Old French possessives and ellipsis”. In: Christina Tortora et al. (eds.). Romance Linguistics 2013: Selected papers from the 43rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), New York, 17-19 April, 2013. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 21-38.
Bale, John. 1557-1559. Scriptorum Iüustrium Maioris Britanniae Quam Nunc Angliam and Scotiam uocant Catalogus. Basileae: Apud Ioannem Oporinum.
Bartelink, G.J.M. 1980. Hieronymus, Liber de optimo genere interpretandi (epistula 57) Leiden: Brill.
Berger, Samuel. 1884 La Bible française au moyen age : étude sur les plus anciennes versions de la Bible écrites en prose de langue d’Oïl. Paris: Imprimerie Nationale.
Bethurum, Dorothy. 1932. “Stylistic Features of the Old English Laws”. The Modern Language Review 27/3, 263-279.
Blake, N. F. 1969. “Rhythmical Alliteration”. Modern Philology 67/2, 118-124.
Boxall, Ian, Tresley, Richard (Eds.). 2016. The Book of Revelation and Its Interpreters: Short Studies and an Annotated Bibliography. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield.
Chapman, Don W. 2017. “Fixity and Flexibility in Wulfstan’s Binomials”. In: Joanna Kopaczyk, Hans Sauer (eds.). Binomials in the History of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 41-62.
Chiesa, Paolo. 1987. “Ad verbum o ad sensum? Modelli e coscienza metodologica della traduzione tra tarda antichità e alto medioevo”. Medioevo e Rinascimento 1, 1-51.
CMEPV= Frances McSparran et al. 2006, Corpus of Middle English Prose and Verse, University of Michigan, Humanities Texts Initiative, available at: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/cme/ [accessed on 15/03/2024].
Copeland, Rita. 1991. Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages: Academic Traditions and Vernacular Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Deanesley, Margaret. 1920. The Lollard Bible and Other Medieval Biblical Versions. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press.
Dove, Mary. 2007. The First English Bible. The Text and Context of the Wycliffite Versions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Dove, Mary. 2012. “Scripture and Reform”. In: Richard Marsden, Ann E. Matter (Eds.). The New Cambridge History of The Bible. Vol. 2: From 600 To 1450. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 585-595.
Durkin, Philip. 2014. Borrowed Words. A History of Loanwords in English. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Emmerson, Richard K. Antichrist in the Middle Ages. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Fischer, Olga. 1992. “Syntax”. In Norman Blake (ed.). The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. II: 1066-1476. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 207-409.
Forshall, Josiah, Madden, Frederic. 1850. The Holy Bible Containing the Old and New Testaments with the Apocryphal Books, in the Earliest English Versions Made from the Latin Vulgate by John Wycliffe and his Followers. 4 vols.. Oxford: Oxford University Press [repr. New York: AMS Press, 1982].
Fridner, Elis. 1961. An English Fourteenth Century Apocalypse Version with a Prose Commentary. Edited from MS Harley 874 and ten other MSS. Lund: Gleerup.
Hanna, Ralph. 2003. “English Biblical Texts before Lollardy and their Fate”. In: Fiona Somerset et al. (eds.). Lollards and their Influence in Late Medieval England. Woodbridge: Boydell, 141-153.
Historia diplomatica Friderici secundi sive constitutiones, privilegia, mandata, instrumenta quae supersunt istius imperatoris et filiorum ejus ; *accedunt epistolae paparum et documenta varia / collegit, ad fidem chartarum et codicum recensuit, juxta seriem annorum disposuit et notis illustravit J. L. A. Huillard-Breholles ; auspiciis et sumptibus H. de Albertis de Luynes. Tomus 2. Parisiis : Plon Fratres, 1852 [Ristampa anast. Torino: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1963]
Hudson, Anne. 1986. “Wyclif and the English Language”. In: Anthony Kenny (ed.). Wyclif in his Times. Oxford: Clarendon, 85-103.
James, Montague Rhodes (ed.). 1912. A descriptive catalogue of the McClean collection of manuscripts in the Fitzwilliam museum. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Johnson, Ian D. 2019. “Literary Theory and Literary Roles”. In Ian D. Johnson (ed.). Geoffrey Chaucer in Context (pp.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 65-71.
Kelly, Henry A. 2016. The Middle English Bible: A Reassessment. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Kelly, Henry A. 2019. “Bible Translation and Controversy in Late Medieval England”. In Jeanette Beer (Ed.). A Companion to Medieval Translation. Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 51-62.
Kelly, Louis G. 1979. The True Interpreter: A History of Translation Theory and Practice in the West. New York: St. Martin’s.
Kopaczyk, Joanna, Sauer, Hans (eds.). 2017. Binomials in the history of English: Fixed and flexible. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lapidge, Michael (ed.), Chiesa, Paolo (transl.). 2010. Beda. Storia degli inglesi. Milano: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla/Arnoldo Mondadori Editore.
Lindberg, Conrad (ed.). 1959-97. The Earlier Version of the Wycliffite Bible. Vols. 1-7. (SSE 6 (1959), SSE 8 (1961), SSE 10 (1963), SSE 13 (1965), SSE 20 (1969), SSE 29 (1973), SSE 81 (1994), SSE 87 (1997). Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell.
McGinn, Bernard. 1979. Visions of the End. Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages. New York: Columbia University Press.
Marsden, Richard. 2012. “The Bible in England”. In: Richard Marsden, Ann E. Matter (Eds.). The New Cambridge History of The Bible. Volume 2: From 600 To 1450. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 217-238.
MED = Kurath, Hans – Sherman M. Kuhn et al. 1952-2001. Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. Online edition in McSparran, Frances et al. (eds.). 2000-2018. Middle English Compendium. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Library. https://quod.lib.umich.edu/m/middle-englishdictionary/dictionary [accessed on 15/03/2024].
Minnis, Alistair. 1987. The Medieval Boethius. Cambridge: Brewer.
Morgan, Nigel. 1988. Early Gothic Manuscripts 1250-1285. London: Harvey Miller.
Morgan, Nigel 2012. “Latin and vernacular Apocalypses”. In: Richard Marsden, Ann E. Matter (Eds.). The New Cambridge History of the Bible. Volume 2: From 600 to 1450. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 404-426.
Morey, James H. 2000. Book and Verse. A Guide to Middle English Biblical Literature. Urbana and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press.
Morris, Richard (ed.). 1868. Old English homilies and homiletic treatises (Sawles warde, and Pe wohunge of Ure Lauerd: Ureisuns of Ure Louerd and of Ure Lefdi, &c.) of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Early English Text Society. London: Trubner & Co.
Mustanoja Tauno F.. 1960. A Middle English Syntax. Part 1: Parts of Speech. Helsinki: Société Neophilologique.
OED = Oxford English Dictionary Online. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com [accessed on 15/03/2024]
Paues, Anna C. 1902. A Fourteenth Century Biblical Version, Consisting of a Prologue and Parts of the New Testament Edited from the Manuscripts, Together with Some Introductory Chapters on Middle English Biblical Version (Prose-Translations). Cambridge: University Press.
Paues, Anna C. 1912. A Study of the Earliest Renderings into English of the Apocalypse with a Commentary. Unpublished PhD Diss.: Lund University Library.
Peters, Robert A. (ed.). 1966. Robert Cawdrey’s A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Usual English Words (1604). Gainesville, Florida: Scholars’ Facsimiles & Reprints.
Prigent, Pierre. 2001. Commentary on the Apocalypse of John. Tübingen: Mohr.
Richards, Mary P. 1989. “Elements of a Written Standard in the Old English Laws”. In: Joseph B. Trahern jr. (ed.), Standardizing English: Essays in the History of Language Change: Essays History Language Change. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1-22.
Rosenbach, Anette. 2002. Genitive Variation in English: Conceptual Factors in Synchronic and Diachronic Studies. Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter.
Rosenbach, Anette et al. 2000. “On the history of the s-genitive”. In: Ricardo Bermúdez-Otero et al. (eds.). Generative Theory and Corpus Studies. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter, 183-210.
Sandler, Lucy. 1986. Gothic Manuscripts 1285–1385. London: Clarendon.
Tanner, Thomas. 1748. Biblioteca Britannico-Hibernica: sive de scriptoribus qui in Anglia, Scotia, et Hibernia. London: William Bowyer.
Updegraff, Derek. 2018. “Ælfric, Alliterative Linking, and the Idea of a Vernacular Verse Line”. Pacific Coast Philology 53/1, 23-42.
Vezzosi, Letizia. 2000a. “S-genitive and of-genitive: competitors or complementary strategies? A diachronic analysis”. In: Giovanni Di Martino, Maria Lima (eds.). English Diachronic Pragmatics. Napoli: CUEN, 399-432.
Vezzosi, Letizia. 2000b. “John his book vs. John’s book: Possession marking in English”. In: Artemis Alexiadou et al. (eds.). ZAS PAPERS IN LINGUISTICS. Special Issue 15. Berlino: Zentrum für allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, 168-198.
Vezzosi, Letizia, Baratta, Luca. (forthcoming). “Neoclassical Borrowings: ‘the Hard Words’ in English”. In: Laura Wright (ed.). The New Cambridge History of the English Language. Volume I: Context, contact and development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Way, Albert (ed.). 1843-65. Promptorium parvulorum sive clericorum, dictionarius anglo-latinus princeps, auctore fratre Galfrido grammatico dicto, ex ordine fratrum Predicatorum, northfolciensi, circa A. D. M.CCCC.XL. Olim ex officina Pynsoniana editum, nunc ab integro, commentariolis subjectis, ad Fidem codicum recensuit Albertus Way. British Library. Manuscript. Harley 221. Londini: Sumptibus Societatis Camdenensis.
Wogan-Browne, Jocelyn et al. (eds.). 1998. The Idea of the Vernacular. An Anthology of Middle English Literary Theory, 1280-1520. Exeter: University of Exeter Press.
Waldron, Ronald. 1988. “Trevisa’s original prefaces on translation: a critical edition”. In: Edward Donald Kennedy, Ronald Waldron, Joseph S. Wittig (eds.). Medieval English Studies Presented to George Kane. Woodbridge: Brewer, 285-299.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
CC-BY-SA
