A Naked Roos: Translation and Subjection in the Middle English La Belle Dame Sans Mercy

by ASHBY KINCH

Richard Roos's translation of Alain Chartier's La Belle Dame Sans Mercy (hereafter referred to as LBDSM) has not directly benefited from either the resurgence of interest in fifteenth-century Middle English poetry among literary scholars or the recent proliferation of studies on Middle English translation. Where the Middle English LBDSM has received attention, scholars have tended to focus on the thematic content of the poem, either implicitly or explicitly subordinating Roos's poetic practice to Chartier's. Critics have almost universally praised the translation performance, but the abiding sentiment maintains that Roos is at his best when he stays out of the way of a clear transmission of the French. The "accuracy" of Roos's translation and its supposed transparency with respect to Chartier's text have thus authorized critics to ignore the Middle English text, treating it as a transparent signifier whose allegiance to its source is presumed to be complete. The recent focus of Middle English translation theory, however, and the recent critical interest in the emerging self-consciousness of vernacular writers in the fifteenth century, demonstrate that the binary model of accuracy and inaccuracy has limited value in understanding Middle English translation practices. Rather than merely accepting criticism of the French source as a proxy for the major critical issues at stake in the text, Middle English criticism needs to analyze the specific literary and cultural structures that govern the way Middle English authors encounter French texts, and thus to examine what that adaptation might mean within the broader context of Middle English literature.