6533b855fe1ef96bd12b047b

RESEARCH PRODUCT

Cultural Transfers and Literary Games : From the Mediaeval French Version of Fair Maguelonne to the Czech Version

subject

description

In the present thesis, we intend to study the novel Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelonne and the translations thereof into German and Czech in greater depth than heretofore. For our corpus, we have chosen the Manuscript of Coburg, edited by R. Colliot, the German translation, made by Veit Warbeck in 1527 and edited by J. Bolte and a Czech edition from 1780, published again by J. Kolár.After presenting the novel, its origins, and selected translations reworkings, we devote a chapter to the definition of the term and the concept of play, because we are convinced that play is the principle on which the novel is constructed. In the third chapter, we propose an interpretation of the text of the Coburg manuscript from the point of view of play, which can be found at several levels of the story and in different ways: between the characters, between the narrator and the reader, with the literary and historical contexts. Certain games are played out on several levels. The most important form of play, which brings out all the others, is, in our opinion, the one that reduces the story line to the absolute minimum.The second part of our thesis is devoted to play in the sense of the textual movements provoked by the transfer of the novel from the French speaking aristocratic milieu to the German speaking world and to the Czech lands. After a short review of the notion of cultural transfers, we look at the reasons which might have led to the transfer of the novel Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelonne to the Court of the Prince-electors of Saxony and from there to a wider German speaking public and finally to the bourgeois milieux and then the ordinary people of the Czech lands. In the last two chapters, we put forward a detailed analysis of the texts that make up our corpus to evaluate the relationships between them and to detect the traces left by the different processes of acculturation undergone by the tale during the successive transfers.In conclusion, we consider the role of play in the translations of our corpus. We then suggest several lines of research which remain to be explored.