Overview

In Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England, Mary Kate Hurley reinterprets a well-recognized and central feature of medieval textual production: translation. Medieval texts often leave conspicuous evidence of the translation process. These translation effects are observable traces that show how medieval writers reimagined the nature of the political, cultural, and linguistic communities within which their texts were consumed. Examining translation effects closely, Hurley argues, provides a means of better understanding not only how medieval translations imagine community but also how they help create communities. Through fresh readings of texts such as the Old English Orosius, Ælfric's Lives of the Saints, Ælfric's Homilies, Chaucer, Trevet, Gower, and Beowulf, Translation Effects adds a new dimension to medieval literary history, connecting translation to community in a careful and rigorous way and tracing the lingering outcomes of translation effects through the whole of the medieval period.

Full Product Details

9780814257951

Table of Contents

Reviews

"""Translation Effects is a rich and rewarding study of multiple modes and consequences of the act of translating ... For the field of medieval studies broadly and early English studies particularly, Hurley's reflections, her care, and her insight exemplify and point us with hopeful energy toward newer and more welcoming ways of thinking and doing."" --Elaine Treharne, Modern Philology ""[Hurley's] study allows us to see how thinkers, writers, scribes, and artists in medieval England grappled with differences between themselves and others, between their historical moment and the past, between the unique elements of their culture and of others. ... I did not expect to be provoked in the final pages into considering the future promised by the book's rich readings and theoretical potentialities."" --Benjamin A. Saltzman, Modern Language Quarterly ""Mary Kate Hurley proposes a new approach to translation studies, using the concept of the translation effect, a broader and more flexible approach to literary and cultural translation than has previously been attempted. Translation Effects is lucid, forceful, and a joy to read."" --Robert Stanton, author of The Culture of Translation in Anglo-Saxon England ""This book is to be welcomed as offering a new angle on translation in medieval England, one that will be of benefit to future scholarship. The key idea of translation effects is original and certainly valuable, and Hurley, by making use of it in her textual analyses, presents interesting readings of a selection of relevant writings."" --Hugh Magennis, Speculum ""This is a well-written, easily absorbed text [that] offers a methodology for examining translations that is apt to bring into sharp focus the wider contemporary concerns of both translator and audience. The study of translation effects may help scholars to better understand how a particular community understood their history and signalled their identity."" --Georgina Pitt, Parergon"

Author Information

Mary Kate Hurley is Associate Professor in the Department of English at Ohio University.

Tab Content 6

Countries Available