Translatio studii (Latin for "transfer of learning") is a historiographical concept which originated in the Middle Ages in which history is viewed as a linear succession of transfers of knowledge or learning from one geographical place and time to another. The concept is closely linked to translatio imperii, which similarly describes the movement of imperial dominance. Both terms are thought to have their origins in the second chapter of the Book of Daniel in the Hebrew Bible (verses 39–40). In the way that politics and social issues move circulate around the world very often in English, these same concepts traveled along the developing roads from Greece and Italy to England during medieval times. As religion spread from Rome to Londinium (or present day Britain) it brought with it other concepts that can still be seen in the Romance languages.

An interesting example of this is the term "translatio" itself. In Ancient times translatio in Latin meant both translation and transfer. As time went on, translatio was designated to only mean transmission and traductio took on the meaning of what we know as translation. This carried over to the developing Romance languages as time went on. The words translation in French and traslazione in Italian mean the displacement of physical objects, and these languages still use other words to mean "translation" in the English sense. In this way, it is clear that historically the significance of translatio studii concerns the transfer of ideas that hold cultural value.

Translatio imperii

Translatio imperii often served as a precedent or coordinate to translatio studii. A transferral of rule assisted a transferral of culture, and vice versa: "The transferal of power also conveys the phoenix-like reestablishment of culture - as fictionalized in and transmitted by literature - which establishes each new imperial power as the new stronghold of the culturally elite."

As it is concerned with the progress of learning, translatio studii provides an overview of intellectual heritage. Although it may be considered from various angles (e.g., history, linguistics, and literature) the concept of translatio studii is fundamentally concerned with texts. "Reading, translating, commenting, interpreting, rewriting — all are common intertextual activities of the translatio studii."

Translatio studii is based on the assumption that human learning and the potential for human learning originated in Greece from whence it spread westward to Rome and then France.

Chrétien de Troyes, a French poet of the late 12th century, writes of translatio studii in the opening of Cligès:

{| align="center" cellpadding="5"

!Original French!! 

|-

|<poem>

Par les livres que nous avons

Les fez des anciiens savons

Et del siecle qui fu jadis.

Ce nos ont nostre livre apris,

Que Grece ot de chevalerie

Le premier los et de clergie.

Puis vint chevalerie a Rome

Et de la clergie la some,

Qui or est en France venue.

Deus doint qu'ele i soit retenue

Et que li leus li abelisse

Tant que ja mes de France n'isse.

</poem>

|<poem>

Through the books which we have,

we know the deeds of the ancients

and of times long passed.

Our books have taught us that

Greece had the first fame

of chivalry and learning.

Then came chivalry to Rome,

and the sum of learning,

which now is come to France.

God grant that it remain there,

and that it find the place so pleasant

that it will never depart from France.

</poem>

|}

Ancient Greek and Roman theatre

All Roman comedy stems from Greek New Comedy but rewritten in Latin with slight adjustments to local taste and the long, narrow stage of Roman theatre. It keeps the characteristics of conventional situations from domestic life and stock character-masks that were traditional in the Greek model.

Roman theatre in turn influenced theatre of the Renaissance. "The nine Greek-style tragedies of Seneca (c. 4 B.C.E. -65 C.E.) are especially noteworthy, partly because they were to have a more profound influence on Renaissance tragedians than their Greek originals." Conventions commonly associated with Renaissance tragedies, most popularly Shakespeare, that are owed to Seneca, are revenge tragedies, structure of five acts, use of elaborate speeches, soliloquies, and asides, violence and horror performed on stage (as opposed to Greek tragedies in which all such actions occurred off stage), and an interest in the human condition, morality of nobility, and the supernatural, specifically with its human connection.

Anglo-Norman cortoisie and romanz

Cortoisie is a synthesis of the superiority of French knighthood and learning. As a new distinction of the French knight, cortoisie implies not only a new style of communication and mastery of language, but a new style of communicative attitude, especially when regarding women. From cortoisie comes courtly love, a highly disciplined, self-denying, and respectful social form. Ideally, in this form, the knight honors his lady as something sacred. This new ideal of love called for a new ideal of language, according to Chrétien, and so, translations from old, dead Latin into French, or romanz, began. It is this language that replaces Latin as a new and lasting period of high culture, and, in so doing, becomes the real language or medium of translatio studii.

See also

  • Hegel's Lectures on the Philosophy of History
  • Great Conversation

Notes

References

  • Bratu, Cristian. "Translatio, autorité et affirmation de soi chez Gaimar, Wace et Benoît de Sainte-Maure." The Medieval Chronicle 8 (2013): 135–164.
  • Budick, Sanford, and Wolfgang Isen, eds. The Translatability of Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between. Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996. Google Books.
  • Carron, Jean-Claude. "Imitation and Intertextuality in the Renaissance." New Literary History, Volume 19, No. 3. (1988): 565–579. Print.
  • Curtius, Ernst Robert. European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages. "Princeton University Press." Princeton, New Jersey. 1990. Print.
  • Gertz, Sunhee Kim. "Translatio studii et imperii: Sir Gawain as literary critic." Semiotica, Volume 63, Issue 1-2. (2009): 185–204. Print.
  • Hornblower, and Spawforth, eds. "Translation." The Oxford Classical Dictionary. 3rd ed. 2003. Print
  • K. Sarah-Jane Murray, "Reading Plato, Writing Romance," in From Plato to Lancelot (Syracuse University Press, 2008)
  • Reis, Levilson C. "Clergie, Clerkly Studium, and the Medieval Literary History of Chrétien de Troyes's Romances." Modern Language Review, Volume 106, Part 3. (2011): 682–696.
  • Rothstein, Marian. "Etymology, Genealogy, and the Immutability of Origins." Renaissance Quarterly, Volume 43, No.2. (1990): 332–347. Print.
  • Wise, Jennifer, and Craig S. Walker, eds. The Broadview Anthology of Drama: Plays from the Western Theatre. Vol. 1. Peterborough, Ont.: Broadview, 2003. Print.