Chaucer As Translator / Translating Chaucer
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The ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions (Europe 1100-1800) presents: program CHAUCER AS TRANSLATOR / TRANSLATING CHAUCER DATE: Tuesday 7 June 2016 LOCATION: Philippa Maddern Seminar Room, Arts 1.33, The University of Western Australia How do we read Chaucer in the knowledge that much of his work is translation? How do we ‘translate’ Chaucer, in a broad sense, into contemporary worlds? This symposium explores those questions, with input from Chaucer scholars working on emotion and affect in various aspects of medieval and medievalism studies: global translation and adaptation; imaginative and sociopolitical geographies; desire and embodiment in literature; literature, ethics and emotion. TUESDAY 7 JUNE 2016 TIME DESCRIPTION 13.00–13.05 Introduction (Andrew Lynch) PAPER 1 13.05–14.00 Candace Barrington (Central Connecticut State University): ‘Translating Emotions in The Canterbury Tales' PAPER 2 14.00–14.35 Michael Barbezat (The University of Western Australia): ‘A Hell of Discourse: Translating The Pardoner's Tale Through Medieval Theology and Critiques of Modern Poststructuralism’ 14.35 – 14.50 TEA BREAK PAPER 3 14.50–15.25 Clare Davidson (The University of Western Australia): ‘Translating Feeling in Troilus and Criseyde’ PAPER 4 15.25–16.00 Paul Megna (The University of Western Australia): ‘Chaucerian Parrhesia’ 16.00 CLOSE CANDACE BARRINGTON TRANSLATING EMOTIONS IN THE CANTERBURY TALES I will review why translation is an important topic for thinking about late-medieval English poetics. Because we generally remember Ricardian and Lancastrian London as a hotbed of intense vernacular creativity, we easily forget this creativity was fueled by intense translation: English poets grounded their authority by translating from the continent’s prestige languages into England’s lowly tongue. Chaucer was no exception. His earliest surviving productions are translations, and he continued to translate well into his career. From his translations, we can see that he understood translation both as a heuristic for grappling with the source text and as a catalyst for discovering new interpretative possibilities in the receiving language. I next want to take our cue from Chaucer and his sense that translation is a useful heuristic for interpreting a source text. We can begin by looking at a few pertinent passages in Boece, which incorporates many of the problems and insights associated with translation. Then, we can turn to two or three non-Anglophone translations of The Canterbury Tales in order to explore how these translations help us see the Tales’s depiction of emotions in a new light. Candace Barrington, a Professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, pursues two research interests. One studies legal and literary discourse in medieval England, leading to several articles and co-edited volumes. The other interest examines Chaucer’s popular reception, resulting in American Chaucers (2007) plus numerous articles. With Jonathan Hsy, she directs Global Chaucers, and they maintain an active blog, have written several articles and are co-editing an essay collection, Chaucer’s Global Pilgrimage. She is a founding editor of the collaborative developing the Open Access Companion to The Canterbury Tales, a free, online introduction reaching Chaucer’s global audience of English readers. abstracts MICHAEL D. BARBEZAT CLARE DAVIDSON PAUL MEGNA A HELL OF DISCOURSE: TRANSLATING TRANSLATING FEELING IN CHAUCERIAN PARRHESIA THE PARDONER’S TALE THROUGH TROILUS AND CRISEYDE In the early 1980s, Michel Foucault MEDIEVAL THEOLOGY AND CRITIQUES The narrator of Troilus and Criseyde became interested in parrhesia, OF MODERN POSTSTRUCTURALISM tells his readers ‘doth therwithal or frank speech, which the ancient I will look at two kinds of translations right as yourselven leste’ – do Greeks defined as a political class involving Chaucer’s Pardoner’s Tale. whatever you please – with his of utterance through which one The first is how Chaucer’s Pardoner description of intimate physical speaks unadorned truth to power translates scholastic ideas of human engagement between the lovers. despite incurring a personal risk engagement with the world through an His openness on this topic obliges for doing so. Remembered for Augustinian sign system. In this system, readers to translate that which it his mastery of irony and apparent the entirety of the created world should seems is intentionally left unsaid political indifference, Geoffrey be understood as signs pointing towards within the text itself, according to Chaucer does not at first seem their creator. If a person loves the world their own cultural knowledge of the most likely candidate for a late as a good in and of itself, they make an the somatic movements of love. medieval parrhesiastes (purveyor interpretive error, mistaking a sign for a Keeping in mind that as language of parrhesia). Nevertheless, my signified. In twelfth-century discussions changes over a thousand years, paper argues that Chaucer was of the afterlife, the experience of hell and consequently ‘...to wynnen acutely interested in exploring relied upon such a disruption in the love in sondry ages, / In sondry how fantasies of parrhesia shape interpretation of signs. Hell is a place of landes, sondry ben usages’, in this subjectivity.� More specifically, I will misreading, really an imprisonment in discussion I consider medieval read The Tale of Melibee against The meaningless discourse where access to representations of the anatomical Manciple’s Tale in order to argue a raw signified is impossible. The second and spiritual effects of desire, in turn that Chaucer developed, over the type of translation that interests me arises bringing attention to our own role course of his literary career, a from the connection between this infernal as readers and translators of the political psychology of parrhesia, misreading and some modern critiques emotional body. which he might� well have put of poststructuralist literary theory. These into action at his career’s end in critiques have argued that the sign has Clare Davidson is currently in the final addressing the envoy of his short stages of writing her PhD dissertation on become the signified, and that scholars poem ‘Lak of Stedfastnesse’ to the the relationship between metaphorical troubled King Richard II. have imprisoned themselves in a box where expressions of love and the bodily discourse is all of existence. This argument experience of desire in fourteenth-century is, in its outlines, identical to the threat Middle English literature. Paul Megna received an MA in English from posed by the Pardoner and elaborated in the University of Rochester and a PhD in English from the University of California, scholastic conceptions of hell. Santa Barbara where he wrote a dissertation on emotion and ethics in Middle English Michael D. Barbezat is an historian of medieval literature. He is currently a postdoctoral intellectual, religious, and cultural history. He received fellow at the ARC Centre for the History of his PhD from the Centre for Medieval Studies at the Emotions at The University of Western University of Toronto. His current project, ‘Burning Australia where he is developing a research� Bodies: Community, Eschatology, and Identity in the project on emotion’s role in medieval drama. Middle Ages’, interrogates the influence of theology He has published articles in Exemplaria, The upon ideologies of community and processes of Yearbook of Langland Studies and PMLA. persecution in the Middle Ages. EMOTIONS MAKE HISTORY.