Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1959, Page 118

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lator. The latter could not possibly be a scholar in the modern sense,
since French literature was not the subject of scholarly studies in any
University. Many mediæval translations are unsatisfactory, and the main
reason is that the translators, however well versed they might be in the
foreign language, did not possess the necessary knowledge of the cultural
background, which could only be acquired by a prolonged stay in the
foreign country, among people who were interested in literature and liter-
ary standards and discussed these things among themselves.
The Scandinavian translator of the Chanson de Roland was actually
faced with a double task, of translating the poem, and of interpreting it
to his audience. The latter was by far the more difficult task, since the
society and the customs depicted in the chansons de geste differed in many
respects from what was familiar to the 13th century Norwegians. There
could be no question of a literal translation, or of creating a sort of Nor-
wegian chanson de geste. Literary experiments of this kind might be pos-
sible at a later stage, when the audience (there was, of course, no real
“reading public”) had become acquainted with the foreign literature in
translation, but at the very beginning the introduction of this foreign liter-
ary genre was in itself sufficiently revolutionary, and the main concern
of translators must have been to avoid unnecessary innovations. I have
already pointed out (above, p. 2) that the early translations of religious
literature are written in a clear and straightforward language, to make
the matter more easily acceptable to the uneducated audience. Even if
some of the courtiers of King Håkon Håkonarson knew Latin and prefer-
red their sagas to be told in an elegant, fashionable language, the really im-
portant thing about the translations was the story and the way in which
it was told. The rhetorical figurae could be learnt at school, and when
some translators used them, the audience probably appreciated it. The
teaching of rhetoric also included the principles of literary composition,
but this was a more difficult, less formal, feature of the rhetorical train-
ing, and even if the more erudite members of the Norwegian clergy may
have understood these principles, it is hardly likely that many educated
courtiers knew anything of literary theory. They would appreciate the
expression félagar ok fgrunautar instead of just félagar because the former
was more elegant, but even if they had read in some A rs Poetica that there
were different ways of telling a story effectively and strikingly, with
examples drawn from e.g. the Aeneid, it is hardly credible that they would
appreciate Vergil’s art in any deeper sense. It is even less likely that the