Bibliotheca Arnamagnæana - 01.06.1981, Blaðsíða 89
applauded for skillful ornamental amplification? Is it possible to distin-
guish at all between the Creative pen of the translator and the editorial -
and sometimes just as Creative - pen of a copyist, even of a succession of
copyists? More often than not we emer the realm of hypothesis when we
ascribe one change or addition to a translator, but another to a scribe.
The text as transmitted in any one manuscript most likely represents the
combined but successive efforts of a translator and one or more copyists.
The word “effort” is used advisedly, and represents both positive and
negative aspects of manuscript transmission. Because of uncertainty with
regard to attribution, because of the intrinsic difficulty, and at times
impossibility of isolating the various textual layers in a particular redac-
tion, the word “author” is used throughout this study to refer to the
combined Creative and editorial forces responsible for the text of a saga
as represented in a particular manuscript.
On the whole, the riddarasogur reflect a tendency toward exegesis: the
French works are clarified, interpreted, or adapted for a Norwegian-
Icelandic audience. Explication of the Arthurian matter assumed a va-
riety of forms: choice of one of several valid interpretations of a French
passage; reduction or omission of text which may have been deemed
superfluous or out of place; amplification for the sake of greater clarity or
better motivation; modification of details or of the sequence of details to
conform to differing literary sensibilities; and choice of approjyiate stylis-
tic ornamentation to stress significant portions of the narrative. Of the
various types of modification in the riddarasogur vis-å-vis their sources,
the translator’s work can be detected or else reconstructed with reason-
able certainty in those passages that correspond clause for clause to the
text of extant French manuscripts. Instances of condensation, amplifica-
tion, or rhetorical ornamentation can be attributed either to the transla-
tor or to a copyist, however. Here we can only postulate.
How difficult a task was enjoined upon the Norwegian translators
becomes clear if one considers, for example, the grail scene in Parcevals
saga. “Nothing is more certain about the Grail legend than the uncertain-
ty which prevailed from the first, and still widely prevails, as to the
meaning of the word grail, Old French graal. ”33 The odd and puzzling
verses in Chrétien’s Perceval regarding the nature and function of the
graal in the castle of the Fisher King (vv. 3220-29; 3234-39; 3245-53; 3290-
33 R. S. Loomis, “The Grail in the Parcevals saga,” The Germanic Review, XXXIX
(1964), p. 97.
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