Overview

Scholars have often viewed the Hundred Years' War (c. 1337-1453) between England and France as sharpening animosity and isolationism. Further, medievalists have often characterized translator-source relationships as adversarial. In Continental England, Elizaveta Strakhov develops a new model, reparative translation, as a corrective to both formulations. Zeroing in on formes fixes poetry-and Chaucer as a leading practitioner-she shows that translation played two essential, interrelated roles: it became a channel for rebuilding fragmented communities, and it restored unity to Francophone cultural landscapes fractured by war. Further, used in particular to express England's aspirational relationship to Francophone culture despite the ongoing war, translation became the means by which England negotiated a new vision of itself as Continental rather than self-contained. Chaucer's own translation work and fusion of Francophone and Italian humanist influences in his poetry rendered him a paradigmatic figure for England's new bid for Continental relevance. Interpreting Chaucer's posthumous canonization as a direct result of reparative translation, Strakhov shows how England's transition from island to Continental constituent problematizes our contemporary understandings of nation-bound authors and canons.

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9780814258163

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Reviews

""Medievalist historians and literary studies scholars will welcome Strakhov's attendance to the late medieval lyric genre known as formes fixes ... This extensive study culminates in a fresh understanding ... Strakhov's text is a worthwhile and scholarly elucidation of a time and its poetry."" --Jeffrey Moser, Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature ""Recent decades have seen an energetic reassessment of the role of French language and culture in late medieval English literature ... [Continental England] is an ambitious new contribution to this burgeoning field."" --Philip Knox, Review of English Studies ""Strakhov provides a great deal of persuasive argument and a number of engaging readings, characterized by an intellectual energy and interest that will surely be productive of a number of future studies ... Strakhov's book is not a little pertinent to the fractures of our present moment."" --William T. Rossiter, Translation and Literature Review

Author Information

Elizaveta Strakhov is Assistant Professor of English at Marquette University.

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