Found in Translation

Comparatists in particular will welcome this translation of three Old Norse-Icelandic versions of French chansons de geste and one original Icelandic riddarasaga. The texts in question are Elis saga ok Rósamunda, Flóvents saga, Bevers saga, and Bærings saga, the first three derived indirectly from versions of Elie de saint Gille, Flovent, and Boeve de Hantone. “Translation” can be understood here in the sense of movement from one language and cultural context to another involving various kinds of adjustment rather than literal translation. Marianne Kalinke takes pains to stress that the first three works appear to be based on lost French redactions of the tales, while Bærings saga is an original, heavily influenced by the Boeve de Hantone story. The first fourteen pages of the introduction contain some familiar material regarding the reception of French romances and chansons de geste in the German-speaking and Nordic countries, emphasizing the role played in Norway by King Hákon Hákonarson and his translator, Brother (later Abbot) Robert, responsible for versions of Thomas's Tristan, Chrétien de Troyes's Yvain, the Lai du mantel (Möttuls saga), a collection of lais bretons (the so-called Strengleikar), and Elis saga. Kalinke supports her arguments regarding the question of Norwegian and Icelandic origins of texts and manuscripts by reference to the surviving manuscripts. As ever, no solution fits all and mileage varies. The vexed question of access to French manuscripts by Norwegian and Icelandic translators is not addressed. Especially interesting in this part of the introduction is the discussion of genre, in which Kalinke on several occasions invokes the ghost of Jean Bodel's threefold classification of narrative into romances of antiquity (based on classical sources), Arthurian romances, and chansons de geste, and their basic function (didactic/moral, entertaining, and historical, respectively). Fundamentally, this was indeed the situation when Jean wrote the Chanson de Saisnes (Song of the Saxons) sometime during the last two decades of the twelfth century but it is likely that by the time Robert produced Tristrams saga for Hákon in 1226, generic distinctions in France were becoming blurred. This is certainly the case judging by manuscript evidence from the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when romances and chansons de geste appear alongside one another in the same books. Kalinke's survey suggests that this same hybridity arises, independently, in Scandinavia, where there is a comparable assimilation in which form and function (long prose narrative with aristocratic protagonists for a court audience) tend to subjugate style and particular subject-matter. “Elis saga, Flóvents saga, and Bevers saga are translations of chansons de geste that engage in a dialectic with the romans courtois” (p. 6). Following the brief survey of translations from the French (pp. 1–10), of necessity not exhaustive, Kalinke argues (pp. 10–14) that the first phase leads to the creation of a new literary genre, the riddarasaga, in Iceland, Bærings saga being an early—perhaps the first—and prime example. Her discussion also surveys some of the classic scholarship on the topic: Cederschiöld, Jónsson, Leach, Schlauch, and De Vries, as well as more recent work by Glauser and Rikhardsdóttir, for example. The general introduction is followed by four individual presentations devoted to the four texts translated here: Elis saga (pp. 14–27), Flóvents saga (pp. 27–35), Bevers saga (pp. 35–42), and Bærings saga (pp. 42–46). In each of these sections, Kalinke works out in more detail the relationship between the four Nordic texts and the—mainly nonextant—French models in the case of the first three. Despite the rich material presented here, one senses a reluctance on Kalinke's part to draw conclusions concerning the significance of the particular features regarding their intended audiences in Iceland and Norway. Some of the incidental observations in these mini-introductions, however, are suggestive: the proposed influence of Chrétien's Erec et Enide (Erec's coronation robe and Enide's wedding outfit in Elis saga) and Yvain (the description of the giant herdsman and the magic ring in Bevers saga), both known in Scandinavia through Erex saga, Ívens saga, and the Eufemiavisa, Herr Ivan, makes an interesting case for a wider knowledge of these romances in the region. The final part of the introduction (pp. 46–51) explains some of the issues confronted by a modern translator of the four texts and justifies the expedients chosen in the present work. Generally speaking, the scholarship cited is useful and à propos, although readers could sometimes arguably be better served by other basic critical resources on Old French. Jessie Crossland's The Old French Epic (1951 [1971 is a reprint]), for example, is really no longer the standard go-to study on the topic, and one might question the use of David Staines's translation of Chrétien de Troyes rather than that of Kibler and Carroll. The four elegant and unfussy prose translations (pp. 52–109, 110–58, 159–209, 210–45), each narrative divided into convenient sections, are followed by a bibliography (pp. 246–51) and an index (pp. 252–56). There is much more to be said about these four “romance epics” than Marianne Kalinke was able to say in the limited space of her introduction, and it is to be hoped that both Scandinavists and comparatists will take this book as a catalyst for further research. And there is also, after all, the possibility of reading these interesting texts just for pleasure

Brother · Icelandic · Norwegian · Old French · Old Norse · SAINT · Historical and Archaeological Studies