by Mary Kate Hurley
The Ohio State University Press, 2021
Cloth: 978-0-8142-1471-8 | eISBN: 978-0-8142-8127-7
Library of Congress Classification PR173.H87 2021
Dewey Decimal Classification 813.0872909

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC
ABOUT THIS BOOK
In Translation Effects: Language, Time, and Community in Medieval England, Mary Kate Hurley reinterprets a well-recognized and central feature of medieval textual production: translation. Medieval texts often leave conspicuous evidence of the translation process. These translation effects are observable traces that show how medieval writers reimagined the nature of the political, cultural, and linguistic communities within which their texts were consumed. Examining translation effects closely, Hurley argues, provides a means of better understanding not only how medieval translations imagine community but also how they help create communities.
 
Through fresh readings of texts such as the Old English Orosius, Ælfric’s Lives of the Saints, Ælfric’s Homilies, Chaucer, Trevet, Gower, and Beowulf, Translation Effects adds a new dimension to medieval literary history, connecting translation to community in a careful and rigorous way and tracing the lingering outcomes of translation effects through the whole of the medieval period.