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The French of England Translation Series (FRETS)
aims to broaden the available range of the French works of medieval England. "French" here replaces
the term "Anglo-Norman," normally used of texts composed in French in England between the twelfth
and fourteenth centuries; it sometimes also replaces "Anglo-French," used of fourteenth- and
fifteenth-century texts circulating between England and the Continent. Although "Anglo-Norman"
has valid current uses (for example, in the continuing high-quality editions of the Anglo-Norman Text Society),
it has tended to be associated with an older nationalizing history, based on post-medieval geopolitical configurations.
The term "French of England" is not fully descriptive, for there are in fact many kinds of French involved,
and not only in England. Wales, Scotland, Ireland and various regions of medieval Europe were also territories
where the texts placed under the rubric "French of England" circulated. But as a term, "French of England"
has a usefully paradoxical quality that points to the complexities of multilingual and multicultural territories;
and, given that "French" is a broader term than "Anglo-Norman" and "Anglo-French," it can denote French in, of,
and from medieval England, in literary and documentary genres, especially during the main francophone period
from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. Many of these texts have not received the attention
they deserve because they have been linguistically inaccessible. FRETS has therefore been conceived
with the intention of enriching the available corpus of what has been called medieval "English" literature,
and encouraging readers to return to the original French texts.
"These excellent volumes suggest a promising future for the FRETS series, which will, one hopes,
succeed in exposing new audiences to this important and understudied body of Insular literature ...
Because of the superb quality of their translations and scholarship these [volumes] will serve as important
resources for scholars and for courses on both Continental and English literature."
— Speculum
Forthcoming
VOLUME V
Henry, Duke of Lancaster: The Book of Holy Medicines (Le Livre de Seyntz Medicines)
Translated by Catherine Batt (University of Leeds)
Forthcoming 2011
OCCASIONAL PUBLICATION I
"Cher alme": Texts of Anglo-Norman Piety
Edited by Tony Hunt, translated by Jane Bliss, with an introduction by Henrietta Leyser
“Cher alme”: Texts of Anglo-Norman Piety offers fourteen hitherto unedited Anglo-Norman texts of doctrine and devotion,
together with their first-ever translations into English. Medievalists and others, including historians of religion and
culture, have increasingly come to appreciate the French of England as a major language for vernacular pastoralia and
the formation of the self in medieval England from the twelfth to the late fourteenth centuries, and one that has to be
considered together with medieval English and Latin. This volume offers a valuable resource for scholars of
medieval English literary culture and will inform and delight readers of all kinds: moving and vivid glimpses of
medieval beliefs, hopes and fears repeatedly leap to the eye in works for and by medieval women and men.
Tony Hunt’s editions, noted as forthcoming in Ruth J. Dean’s Anglo-Norman Literature:
A Guide to Texts and Manuscripts, will be welcomed by all who wish to read these works in their original language,
while Jane Bliss’s translations will ensure that readers new to the field have access to its riches.
Henrietta Leyser’s introduction provides important context for these newly available texts.
Forthcoming 2010 / 978-0-86698-433-1 / MR 385 / $60, £45
VOLUME II
The Life of St. Alban by Matthew Paris
Translated by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (University of York, UK) and Thelma S. Fenster (Fordham University)
This volume presents the first translation of Matthew Paris's Vie de seint Auban, the great
thirteenth-century chronicler's life of the patron saint of his own monastery of St. Albans.
In addition to its role within the monastery, this key text in Paris’s canon was aimed at elite lay patrons
from the court of Henry III. The Life, extant in a single manuscript largely written in Paris's own hand and
extensively illustrated by him, offers vivid accounts of conversion and crusading piety, and casts the Romano-Britons
of early England as evil Saracens. The manuscript has not been published in detail since M. R. James' black and white
collotype prints of 1924. Modern scholarship's relative neglect of the work is addressed in this volume,
which includes a substantial introduction, a new translation of Paris's chief source, the Vita sancti Albani,
and two essays on the manuscript, together with generous color illustration. The volume will be of interest to scholars
and readers of medieval literature, history and culture. An appendix of original text excerpts adds to its usefulness
in both graduate and undergraduate courses.
Forthcoming 2010 / 978-0-86698-390-7 / MR 342 / $45, £28
New Titles
VOLUME IV
The Birth of Romance in England:
The Romance of Horn
The Folie Tristan
The Lai of Haveloc
and Amis and Amilun
Four Twelfth-Century Romances in the French of England
Translated and Introduced by Judith Weiss (Cambridge University)
These four 12th-century Anglo-Norman romances, here translated into English for the first time,
were written to entertain the families of those barons who accompanied William the Conqueror to Britain
and who soon developed an interest in the legends of their adopted land. The poets they patronized
created lively narratives linked to British history, topography, and folklore.
The hero of the Romance of Horn, a sophisticated romance and the earliest to be written in Britain,
is wrongly dispossessed and exiled, but defeats his Saracen enemies and returns in triumph to claim his inheritance.
Similarly disinherited, the hero of the Lai of Haveloc is a Danish prince who eventually rules
both England and Denmark. Cornwall is the setting for the Folie Tristan, a story of Tristan feigning madness
in order to visit his lover, Iseut. Amis e Amilun celebrates two identical friends who exploit their resemblance
to extricate themselves from tricky situations but have to pay the price.
2009 / 207 + xiv pages / 978-0-86698-392-1 / MR 344 / $45, £28
VOLUME III
Boeve de Haumtone and Gui de Warewic: Two Anglo-Norman Romances
Translated by Judith Weiss (Cambridge University)
"… a welcome contribution, these entertaining and influential verse romances had not been available
in Modern English. … Weiss's Introduction covers all the bases and helpfully indicates paths for further study.
The prose translations are generally painstakingly faithful to the source-editions, but they are also a pleasure to read
… one is continually impressed by Weiss's good judgment and attention to detail… . Perhaps [her] engaging Boeve
and rip-roaring Gui will … join forces to refresh the reading lists of medieval studies courses far and wide."
— Encomia
Boeve de Haumtone and Gui de Warewic are two lively and colourful Anglo-Norman romances which are the
predecessors to later Middle English narratives. The characters and plots they invented became popular all over Europe,
and remained so until the nineteenth century. Here they are translated for the first time into modern English,
which should enable scholars to pay them the attention they deserve and to understand much better the development
of insular narrative in both the vernaculars of medieval England.
2008 / 264 + xiv pages / 978-0-86698-378-5 / MR 332 / $45, £28
VOLUME I
The History of Saint Edward the King by Matthew Paris
Translated by Thelma S. Fenster (Fordham University) and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (University of York, UK)
"Careful, accurate, emininently readable [translation] ... ample space [devoted] to historical concerns …
should interest not only readers new to Insular hagiography but also scholars working with the medieval French text,
for which this volume could easily double as a commentary."
— Speculum
Matthew Paris (d. 1259), Benedictine monk of St. Albans Abbey, is a well-known artist, mapmaker, and Latin chronicler
of English history and English and European affairs at large, who also composed and illustrated a number of verse saints’
lives in the French of England. His History of Saint Edward the King, dedicated to Queen Eleanor, is an important
representation of the values and dynastic concerns of King Henry III’s reign. Paris’s life of Edward the Confessor
emphasizes Edward as married virgin king, dispenser of wisdom and courtesy, miraculous healer and harmonious ruler,
and it asserts dynastic and cultural continuity between Edward the Confessor and Henry III. The life is also notable
for its portrayal of Anglo-Danish relations; its vilification of Harold Godwinson’s brief reign before the
Battle of Hastings and the taking of the English throne by the Norman duke William; and its creative adaptations of romance,
epic, historiography, and hagiography.
In addition to a prose translation of the life’s narrative verse and the rhymed rubrics accompanying its text and
manuscript illustrations, this volume contains a full introductory discussion of the historical, cultural, literary and
stylistic contexts in which Paris wrote Edward’s life. An appendix of passages from the original text, a generous selection
of suggested further reading, and an index of proper names facilitate use of the volume in teaching. The volume has been carefully
designed so that its translations of text and rubrics from the extant manuscript can be used in conjunction with the
presentation of the manuscript on the web at www.lib.cam.ac.uk/MSS/Ee.3.59.
The volume inaugurates the French of England Translation Series, designed to make more widely available the large literary corpus
(nearly a thousand texts) composed in the French of England from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. Although many such texts
have been given excellent editions by the Anglo-Norman Text Society, more general awareness of medieval England’s French texts
and records has often fallen between continental French scholarship and scholarship in medieval English. The works composed in the
French of England include important texts which deserve attention in their own right, and are also important to a fully informed
awareness of medieval English and Latin literature and historiography as participating in a multilingual culture in medieval Britain.
The series is academically edited by Thelma Fenster and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, respectively professors of medieval French and
medieval English literature, and has commissioned a dozen further scholarly and accessible translations of works in the
French of England.
2008 / 166 + xvi pages / 978-0-86698-389-1 / MR 341 / $40, £24
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