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Googling around has given me the impression that while the Matter of Britain and the Matter of Rome have been richly treated in English, there's no love for the Matter of France. Does anyone care to disagree? I'm interested in hearing your favorite (or most avant-garde -- I was surprised that no seems to have done a translation in the last 20 years) translation of "Chanson de Roland". I'd also love to hear about adaptations of the story, a la T. H. White for Arthurian legend.
I think this primarily is true because students feel that they can relate to more modern translations for a better understanding of the prose or poetical work. The best translation is subjective, and many times the older ones are the preferred. My 'Roland' is in the Moncrieff translation as are many of my French works such as The Red and the Black, Charterhouse of Parma, etc.
I have never read a more enjoyable translation of The Iliad than the 18th centuy Alexander Pope translation. Try the Moncrieff translation. New is not always better.
c
Hi dfloyd,
Thanks so much for the response! The other nice thing about old translations is that they're out of copyright; Moncrieff is on Gutenberg, and now on my iPhone.
I'm still a sucker for new verse translations, though. I'm also acquiring Slavitt's 'Orlando furioso', which Amazon assures me is shockingly loose in translation, liberal in abridgments, and very funny. I guess my take is that a great story always leaves room for more interpretation, and I like to see that people are still reading it and thinking it over and retelling it (and somehow getting paid to publish it).
Best,
Nick
Hi to any readers of medieval literature and to Song of Roland readers in particular! I would be very grateful of any feedback, positive or negative, on my new translation of The Song of Roland - either the written version or the 'audio version'. It takes quite a while to do a verse translation, and I'm loath to start another one without some feedback on my last effort! It can be sampled on amazon, for anybody interested!! Thanks.
I'll be giving it a look since I like your other work. Shame I ran across this post nine years too late. I'm currently reading your Girart de Vienne.Quote:
Originally Posted by michael newth
To anyone who cares to know, Michael Newth is one of the only guys doing modern translations of old French chanson de geste. The Song of Roland is one of about a hundred of these stories. They form this huge mythology of prequels and sequels which were popular reading from the twelfth to the sixteenth century. If King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table were the DC of their age then Charlemagne and his Twelve Peers of France were the Marvel and together they made up this tremendous corpus of chivalric mythology.
I just got done reading The Four Sons of Aymon a prequel to Song of Roland that includes Roland and the other knights as characters. But the protagonist isn't Roland. It's Renaud of Montauban, who's kind of a French Robin Hood. He actually does battle with Roland at one point, but they become friends by the end the same as Roland battles Oliver in Girart de Vienne. It's such a shame nobody is publishing updated versions of these stories because they are so fun. Mr. Newth's book Heroes of the French Epic is out of print and going for 120 bucks on Amazon right now. I'm going to try and get a copy through interlibrary loan.
Definitely going to check out his Song of Roland since I don't think I liked the Moncrieff translation. How that could be considered the best Chanson if that's an accurate translation is beyond me. I liked The Four Sons of Aymon much more.