The audience for Old English texts: Ælfric, rhetoric and ‘the edification of the simple’

There is a persistent view that Old English texts were mostly written to be read or heard by people with no knowledge of Latin, or little understanding of it, especially the laity. This is not surprising because it is what the texts themselves tend to say. In this article I argue that these statements about audience reflect two rhetorical devices and should not be understood literally. This has implications for our understanding of the reasons why writers chose to use Old English and their attitudes towards translation of various kinds into the vernacular

Cell by cell, gene by gene, galaxy by galaxy: A. S. Byatt's scientific imagination

Right from her first novels, A. S. Byatt’s fiction is pervaded by scientific knowledge, derived from very different branches of science. From the Darwinian neo-Victorian stories of Angels and Insects (1992) to her latest reworking of Ragnarok’s myth in Ragnarok: The End of the Gods (2011), revealing obvious environmental concerns, we will find in her fiction the mind of a writer for whom the materiality of science makes possible a more objective understanding of the world that surrounds us. The aim of this paper is, on the one hand, to provide an overview of what we here call A. S. Byatt’s “scientific imagination” as displayed in a great part of her fiction and, on the other, to focus on the way Byatt’s scientific imagination intertwines with her conception of artistic knowledge and vision

America\u27s Dutch Identity: The Dutch, New Netherland, and the Struggle for Freedom of Religion

This paper explores the history of New Netherland in light of the Dutch struggle for identity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Dutch originally belonged to the Holy Roman Empire as a Spanish territory, and were staunchly Catholic. However, with the coming of the Protestant Reformation, things began to change. With the Reformation came a revolution against their rulers, and also a religious diversity previously unheard of in Europe. This struggle carried over into the borders of America with the Dutch establishment of New Netherland. New Netherland was the experiment of religious freedom in practice for the Dutch. The colony became home to a wide variety of religious dissenters that found no resting place in Europe. The Dutch Reformed Church struggled for its autonomy against the increasing religious pluralism, and the latter eventually won out before the English took over New Netherland, renaming it New York and New Jersey after dividing the land. The pluralism present in New York and New Jersey helped set the tone for religious freedom in America today

How the Mind Turns Language into Meaning

Book Revie

Modern Theoretical Approaches to Medieval Translation

This chapter explores some of the ways in which modern literary theory opens insights into medieval European translations. Rather than drawing a distinction between theoretical approaches that apply to medieval studies and those that do not, I will explore a few examples that might in turn inspire readers to their own insights. It is my hope that over time readers of this Companion to Medieval Translation will posit many more modern theoretical approaches to medieval translation than can be suggested here. We might even imagine that some of the particularities of medieval European theories of translation could themselves be codified as approaches to texts from other times and places. It is the nature of theory, after all, to exceed its context. Connections grow by analogy across times, places, and cultures. In keeping with this volume’s focus, my comments are primarily addressed to Latinate and Germanic languages, although some aspects may apply to other language groups (and Arabic should certainly be included among the medieval European languages)

Translating (or Not) a South American Philosopher The paratexts of the works of José Enrique Rodó in English

This study will consider translation as a tool to transfer ideas from Latin America to North America (and the rest of the English-speaking world). It will do so by exploring some of the paratextual strategies that have been employed in transmitting the ideas of Latin American philosophers to the English-speaking world. Specifically, it will rely on a case study, namely, the translation into English of the works of José Enrique Rodó, an important South American philosopher from the early twentieth century. The paper will outline Rodó’s work as translated into English, focusing not on the quality of the translated texts themselves but rather on what the translations were expected to do. As a way to understand their expected functions, the present study will describe the paratextual apparatuses that surround the translations. Such an analysis will rely on Gérard Genette’s work on paratexts to draw conclusions regarding the role of translation in the flow of ideas from the Global South to the Global North