TRANSLATIS · Translating from Latin: Contacts, Transfer, and Rewriting of Historiographical Texts in Medieval Iceland

Translating from Latin: Contacts, Transfer, and Rewriting of Historiographical Texts in Medieval Iceland

Translated texts play an important role in the beginning of literacy in the vernaculars in the European Middle Ages. The process towards literacy is initiated by the arrival and then propagation of Christianity. Translation, however, did not only serve as means to promote the new religion, it kept being an important tool for the import of cultural goods. The MSCA project TRANSLATIS focuses on the Old Norse Trójumanna saga, a historiographical text translated from Latin into Old Norse. While it does not seem far fetched to assume that such translations from Latin might have had a function as literary models, one might also ask about the socio-cultural motivations and functions of those texts: Were the Icelanders only interested in importing the common matters which were in fashion everywhere in Europe? Or did they also import new concepts that came with the texts? And if so, how were they translated and transformed for the audience? Is it possible that some people even used certain texts to promote their political agenda? Who were those people? Where and who were their contacts? The main research objectives of the project are: 1. to identify the source texts or at least describe the source texts as precisely as possible in the manuscript transmission taking into consideration “minor” sources and additional source texts in Old French (mainly Anglo-Norman, but also Middle French for the later rewritings) 2. to identify the persons and centers in Iceland that initiated and executed the historiographical translations from Latin into Old Norse and to identify the contacts in the source cultures (Britain, Continent) 3. to analyze how those translations are made in comparison with the multiple source texts in terms of alterations, augmentations, and appropriations 4. to compare the political and ethical concepts of source texts and target texts and analyze them in their historical context 5. to examine changes in content, form, context, and function over the time of transmission 6. to describe the repertoire (“rules” and “materials”, according to the culture researcher Even-Zohar) of the literary transfer 7. to deduct from the results of the analysis what cultural needs were fulfilled by those translations and which functions they might have served

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз