[en] This article examines the role that translation may have played in the development of medieval vernacular literature. It analyses an extract of an early 13th-c. translation into a hybrid French-Occitan vernacular of an 8th-c. historical text, the 'Liber Historiae Francorum'. The translation coincides with the adoption of narrative prose both in Old French and in Occitan literature, which reflects a growing interest in historical writings. The second half of the article compares the anecdote with the narrative structures and content of one of the troubadour 'vidas' and 'razos' - biographical texts in prose that emerged in the same period and regions as this translation. The article concludes by suggesting that the new vernacular genre shares narrative features with the early medieval Latin text that are preserved in its translation.
see Catherine Leglu, 'Charlemagne in Occitania' (forthcoming).
For related work on medieval translation, see my '"Just as Fragments are Part of a Vessel": A Translation into Medieval Occitan of the Life of Alexander the Great', in Medieval Translation, ed. by Christa Canitz (Florilegium, 31 (2014) [2016]), 57-78.
Peggy McCracken, The Romance of Adultery: Queenship and Sexual Transgression in Old French Literature (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), pp. 15-24, 52-83.
Nancy B. Black, Medieval Narratives of Accused Queens (Gainesville: University of Florida Press, 2003), pp. 6-9, 68-71;
and Sabine Savoye, 'Le Pouvoir des reines mérovingiennes dans l'hagiographie mérovingienne', in Femmes de pouvoir et pouvoirs de femmes, dans l'Europe occidentale médiévale et moderne, ed. by E. Santinelli and A. Nayt-Dubois (Valenciennes: Presses universitaires de Valenciennes, 2009), pp. 43-60.
Daniel Lacroix, Les Amours du poéte: poésie et biographie dans la littérature du XIIIe siécle (Geneva: Slatkine, 2004), pp. 45-62;
Simon Gaunt, Love and Death in Medieval French and Occitan Courtly Literature: Martyrs to Love (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), pp. 73-103 (pp. 77-9).
Ruth Mazo Karras, Sexuality in Medieval Europe: Doing unto Others, 2nd edn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012), pp. 112-22;
Mary Jane Schenk, 'Reflections on the Costuma d'Agen', Tenso, 26:1-2(2011), 16-29 (pp. 26-7)
and Leah Otis-Cour, '"De jure novo": Dealing with Adultery in the Fifteenth-Century Toulousain', Speculum, 84(2009), 347-92 (pp. 352-4, n. 24).
Otis-Cour, '"De jure novo"', p. 349.
Tote l'Istoire de France (Chronique saintongeaise), ed. by F. W. Bourdillon (London: Nutt, 1897).
Edition of the Pseudo-Turpin part of this chronicle: André de Mandach, Chronique dite Saintongeaise, texte franco-occitan inédit 'Lee'. A la découverte d'une chronique gasconne du XIIIe siécle et de sa poitevinisation (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1970).
Henry J. Chaytor, Savaric de Mauléon, Baron and Troubadour (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939);
William E. Burgwinkle, Love for Sale: Materialist Readings of the Troubadour Razo Corpus (New York: Garland, 1997), pp. 107-12;
Saverio Guida, Primi approcci a Uc de Saint-Circ (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 1996);
Martine Cao Carmichael de Baiglie, 'Savary de Mauléon (ca 1180-1233), chevalier-troubadour poitevin: traîtrise et société aristocratique', Le Moyen Âge, 105(1999), 269-305.
Liber Francorum Historiae, ed. by Bruno Krusch, in Monumenta Germaniae Historia, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, vol. II (Hanover: Hahn, 1888), pp. 215-328 (online: [accessed 7 June 2016]);
Liber Historiae Francorum: le livre de l'histoire des Francs depuis leurs origines jusqu'à 721, transl. by Nathalie Desgrugillers-Billard (Clermont-Ferrand: Editions paleo, 2007), ch. 35, pp. 122-4, Latin text, pp. 222-4;
Claude Buridant, 'La Traduction de la chronique d'Adémar de Chabannes dans Tote l'istoire de France', Revue de linguistique romane, 40(1976), 57-115;
Ademari Cabannensis Chronicon, ed. by Pascal Bourgain, with Richard Landes and G. Pon, Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Medievalis, CXXIX (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999).
Christine de Pizan, La Città delle Donne, ed. by Earl Jeffrey Richards, transl. by Patrizia Caraffi (Milan: Luni Editrice, 1997), ch. XXXIV;
Colette Beaune, 'La Mauvaise Reine des origines: Frédégonde aux XIVe et XVe siécles', Mélanges de l'école française de Rome, Italie et Méditerranée, 113(2001), 29-44;
Éliane Viennot, 'L'Histoire des reines de France dans le débat sur la loi salique (fin XVe-fin XVIe siécles) ', in Femmes de pouvoir et pouvoirs de femmes, dans l'Europe occidentale médiévale et moderne, ed. by E. Santinelli and A. Nayt-Dubois (Valenciennes: Presses universitaires de Valenciennes, 2009), pp. 83-95.
Emil Levy, Petit Dictionnaire provençal-français (Heidelberg: Carl Winter-Universitatsverlag, 1973), p. 256 cites the feminine plural noun 'naches, nagas' meaning 'buttocks'.
See de Mandach, Chronique dite Saintongeaise, pp. 175-6.
Krusch, LHF, pp. 302-4;
Microfilm online: [accessed 7 June 2016].
Historia Karoli Magni et Rotholandi, ou Chronique du Pseudo-Turpin, ed. Cyril Meredith-Jones (Geneva: Droz, 1936);
André de Mandach, Naissance et développement de la chanson de geste en Europe: I. La Geste de Charlemagne et de Roland (Geneva and Paris: Droz and Minard, 1961), pp. 79-81
and de Mandach, Chronique dite Saintongeaise.
Étienne Darley, Fragments d'anciennes chroniques d'Aquitaine d'aprés des manuscrits du XIIIe siécle, introduction et texte (Bordeaux: Féret et fils, 1906), pp. 21, 22;
Buridant, 'La Traduction', pp. 57-9.
Bourgain, Ademari, pp. xi-xxxi, lxxviii-ix
Chronicon, 3vI, 34, pp. 51-2.
Microfilms of fr. 5714 and fr. 124 are online: < http://gallica.bnf.fr > [accessed 7 June 2016].
Cyril Meredith-Jones, 'The Chronicle of Turpin in Saintonge', Speculum, 13:2(1938), 160-79 (p. 161).
On language, see de Mandach, Chronique dite Saintongeaise, pp. 25-54.
Meredith-Jones, 'The Chronicle'.
H. M. Smyser, The Pseudo-Turpin, BN, Fonds latin, MS 17656 (Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1937), pp. 6-9.
'Sic Aumericus, Pictave gentis amicus/Eximie vitam Katherine transtulit istam', in La Passion de Sainte Catherine d'Alexandrie par Aumeric: editee d'apres le ms. 945 de la bibliotheque de Tours, ed. by Olivier Nadeau (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1982), p. 173;
Jacques Pignon, 'Les Formes verbales de Tote l'istoire de France, texte saintongeais du XIIIe siecle', Melanges de linguistique offerts a Albert Dauzatpar ses eleves et ses amis (Paris: Artrey, 1951), pp. 257-74
and his L'Evolution phonetique des parlers du Poitou (Vienne et Deux-Sevres), 2 vols (Paris: Artrey, 1960), I, pp. 39-57, 514-16, 522.
Mary W. Hackett, La Langue de 'Girart de Roussillon' (Geneva: Droz, 1970);
Olivier Nadeau, 'Informations sur la langue de Aigar et Maurin', Romania, 115:34(1997), 337-67.
Nadeau, La Passion, pp. 22-4.
Pignon, 'Les Formes linguistiques'; Buridant, 'La Traduction';
de Mandach, Chronique dite Saintongeaise, pp. 24-45
and by the same author, 'A propos de la peripherie occitane: la Chronique dite saintongeaise', in Beiträge zur allgemeinen, indogermanischen und romanischen Sprachwissenschaft. Festschrift fur Johannes Hubschmid zum 65. Geburtstag (Bern/Munich: Francke, 1982), pp. 867-97.
See the reviews of Chronique dite Saintongeaise by Max Pfister, Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie, 86(1970), 563-72
and Claude Buridant, Romania, 96(1975), 413-25.
For his responses, see Andre de Mandach, A propos de la Chronique dite saintongeaise: un regain', Zeitschrift fur romanische Philologie, 89 (1973) 454-67, and his A propos'.
Richard A. Gerberding, The Rise of the Carolingians and the 'Liber Historiae Francorum' (New York: Clarendon Press, 1989);
Rosamund McKitterick, History and Memory in the Carolingian World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 10.
Joaquín Martínez Pizarro, A Rhetoric of the Scene: Dramatic Narrative in the Early Middle Ages (Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press, 1989), pp. 9-14, quotations at pp. 63-4, 14 and 41.
Pizarro, Rhetoric of the Scene, pp. 19-36, quotation at p. 35.
Bourdillon, Tote listoire, pp. xxi-ii;
Berte as grans pies, ed. by Albert Henry (Geneva: Droz, 1982), pp. 30-4;
Black, Narratives, pp. 68-71.
Suzanne Fonay Wemple, Women in Frankish Society: Marriage and the Cloister, 500 to 900 (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1981), pp. 80-2;
McCracken, Romance of Adultery, p. 52;
Buhrer-Thierry, 'La Reine adultere';
Otis-Cour, '"de jure novo"', p. 351.
McKitterick, History and Memory, p. 13.
Savoye, 'Le Pouvoir des reines', p. 55.
Buridant, 'La Traduction', p. 61, n. 2;
de Mandach, Chronique dite Saintongeaise, pp. 175-6.
McCracken, Romance of Adultery, p. 33.
Elizabeth Wilson Poe, From Poetry to Prose in Old Provencal: The Emergence of the 'Vidas', the 'Razos' and the 'Razos de trobar' (Birmingham, AL: Summa Publications, 1984), pp. 35-66;
Burgwinkle, Love for Sale;
Lacroix, Les Amours dupoete, pp. 36-41, 49-62
and Simon Pender, 'Vidal in Furs: Lyric Poetry, Narrative, and Masoch (ism) ', Comparative Literature, 58:2(2006), 95-112.
Burgwinkle, Love for Sale, pp. 107-12;
Guida, Primi approcci;
Cao Carmichael de Baiglie, 'Savary de Mauleon', pp. 287-91.
Pizarro, Rhetoric of the Scene, pp. 9-14, 41
compare Lacroix, Les Amours du poete, pp. 49-62.
Jean Boutiere and A.-H. Schutz, with Irenee-Marie Cluzel, Biographies des troubadours: textes provençaux des XIIIe et XIVe siecles (Paris: Nizet, 1973), LXXb, pp. 451-2.
Burgwinkle, Love for Sale, pp. 189-90, 252-6;
A. C. Spearing, The Medieval Poet as Voyeur: Looking and Listening in Medieval Love-Narratives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 1-22.
Burgwinkle, Love for Sale, p. 190.
Burgwinkle, Love for Sale, pp. 252-6.
Spearing, Medieval Poet, pp. 17-19;
Otis-Cour, '"De jure novo"', pp. 351-2.
Pizarro, Rhetoric of the Scene, p. 14.
Schenk, 'Reflections', pp. 26-7;
Otis-Cour, '"De jure novo"', p. 363.
Pizarro, Rhetoric of the Scene, pp. 34-5, 41-2.
Buridant, 'La Traduction', p. 114.
Gabrielle Spiegel, Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in Thirteenth-Century France (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992).
On the debate concerning prose, see Peter Damian-Grint, The New Historians of the Twelfth-Century Renaissance: Inventing Vernacular Authority (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1999), pp. 173-6.
