Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages Translating Cultures

This collection of original essays is dedicated to exploring the intersections between medieval and postcolonial studies. Ranging across a variety of academic disciplines, from art history to cartography, and from Anglo-Saxon to Hispanic studies, this volume highlights the connections between medieval and postcolonial studies through the exploration of a theme common to both areas of study: translation as a mechanism of and metaphor for cultures in contact, confrontation and competition. Drawing upon the widespread medieval trope of the translation of empire and culture, this collection engages the concept of translation from its most narrow, lexicographic sense, to the broader applications of its literal meaning, to carry across. It carries the multilingual, multicultural realities of medieval studies to postcolonial analyses of the coercive and subversive powers of cultural translation, offering a set of case studies of translation as the transfer of language, culture and power.

Part I. Introduction: 1. A return to wonder Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanne Williams; Part II. The Afterlife of Rome: 2. Anglo-Saxon England and the postcolonial void Nicholas Howe; 3. Mapping the ends of Empire Alfred Hiatt; 4. 'On Fagne Flor': the post-colonial Beowulf, from Heorot to Heaney Seth Lerer; Part III. Orientalism Before 1600: 5. Alexander in the Orient: bodies and boundaries in the Roman de toute chevalerie Suzanne Conklin Akbari; 6. Gower's monster Deanne Williams; 7. Turks as Trojans, Trojans as Turks: visual imagery of the Trojan War and the politics of cultural identity in fifteenth-century Europe James Harper; Part IV. Memory and Nostalgia: 8. Analogy in translation: Imperial Rome, medieval England and British India Ananya Jahanara Kabir; 9. 'Au commencement était l'ile': the colonial formation of Joseph Bédier's Chanson de Roland Michelle R. Warren; 10. The protocolonial baroque of La Celestina Roland Greene; Epilogue: translations and transnationals: pre- and postcolonial Ato Quayson.

This collection of original essays is dedicated to exploring the intersections between medieval and postcolonial studies. Ranging across academic disciplines, this volume highlights the connections between medieval and postcolonial studies through the exploration of translation as a mechanism of and metaphor for cultures in contact, confrontation and competition.