Visual Translation

Visual Translation breaks new ground in the study of French manuscripts, contributing to the fields of French humanism, textual translation, and the reception of the classical tradition in the first half of the fifteenth century. While the prominence and quality of illustrations in French manuscripts have attracted attention, their images have rarely been studied systematically as components of humanist translation. Anne D. Hedeman fills this gap by studying the humanist book production closely supervised by Laurent de Premierfait and Jean Lebgue for courtly Parisian audiences in the first half of the fifteenth century. Hedeman explores how visual translation works in a series of unusually densely illuminated manuscripts associated with Laurent and Lebgue circa 140454. These manuscripts cover both Latin texts, such as Statiuss Thebiad and Achilleid, Terences Comedies, and Sallusts Conspiracy of Cataline and Jurguthine War, and French translations of Ciceros De senectute, Boccaccios De casibus virorum illustrium and Decameron, and Brunis De bello Punico primo. Illuminations constitute a significant part of these manuscripts textual apparatus, which helped shape access to and interpretation of the texts for a French audience. Hedeman considers them as a group and reveals Laurents and Lebgues growing understanding of visual rhetoric and its ability to visually translate texts originating in a culture removed in time or geography for medieval readers who sought to understand them. The book discusses what happens when the visual cycles so carefully devised in collaboration with libraries and artists by Laurent and Lebgue escaped their control in a process of normalization. With over 180 color images, this major reference book will appeal to students and scholars of French, comparative literature, art history, history of the book, and translation studies.