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The French of England Translation Series (FRETS)
aims to broaden the available range of the French works of medieval England. "French" here replaces
the term "Anglo-Norman," normally used of texts composed in French in England between the twelfth
and fourteenth centuries; it sometimes also replaces "Anglo-French," used of fourteenth- and
fifteenth-century texts circulating between England and the Continent. Although "Anglo-Norman"
has valid current uses (for example, in the continuing high-quality editions of the Anglo-Norman Text Society),
it has tended to be associated with an older nationalizing history, based on post-medieval geopolitical configurations.
The term "French of England" is not fully descriptive, for there are in fact many kinds of French involved,
and not only in England. Wales, Scotland, Ireland and various regions of medieval Europe were also territories
where the texts placed under the rubric "French of England" circulated. But as a term, "French of England"
has a usefully paradoxical quality that points to the complexities of multilingual and multicultural territories;
and, given that "French" is a broader term than "Anglo-Norman" and "Anglo-French," it can denote French in, of,
and from medieval England, in literary and documentary genres, especially during the main francophone period
from the twelfth through the fifteenth centuries. Many of these texts have not received the attention
they deserve because they have been linguistically inaccessible. FRETS has therefore been conceived
with the intention of enriching the available corpus of what has been called medieval "English" literature,
and encouraging readers to return to the original French texts.
Forthcoming
VOLUME IV
Henry of Lancaster's Book of Holy Medicine
Translated by Catherine Batt (University)
VOLUME II
The Life of St. Alban by Matthew Paris
Translated by Thelma S. Fenster and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (Fordham University)
New Titles
VOLUME III
Boeve de Haumtone and Gui de Warewic: Two Anglo-Norman Romances
Translated by Judy Weiss (Cambridge University)
Boeve de Haumtone and Gui de Warewic are two lively and colourful Anglo-Norman romances which are the
predecessors to later Middle English narratives. The characters and plots they invented became popular all over Europe,
and remained so until the nineteenth century. Here they are translated for the first time into modern English,
which should enable scholars to pay them the attention they deserve and to understand much better the development
of insular narrative in both the vernaculars of medieval England.
2008 / 264 + xiv pages / 978-0-86698-378-5 / MR 332 / $45, £28
VOLUME I
The History of Saint Edward the King by Matthew Paris
Translated by Thelma S. Fenster (Fordham University) and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne (University of York, UK)
Matthew Paris (d. 1259), Benedictine monk of St. Albans Abbey, is a well-known artist, mapmaker, and Latin chronicler
of English history and English and European affairs at large, who also composed and illustrated a number of verse saints’
lives in the French of England. His History of Saint Edward the King, dedicated to Queen Eleanor, is an important
representation of the values and dynastic concerns of King Henry III’s reign. Paris’s life of Edward the Confessor
emphasizes Edward as married virgin king, dispenser of wisdom and courtesy, miraculous healer and harmonious ruler,
and it asserts dynastic and cultural continuity between Edward the Confessor and Henry III. The life is also notable
for its portrayal of Anglo-Danish relations; its vilification of Harold Godwinson’s brief reign before the
Battle of Hastings and the taking of the English throne by the Norman duke William; and its creative adaptations of romance,
epic, historiography, and hagiography.
In addition to a prose translation of the life’s narrative verse and the rhymed rubrics accompanying its text and
manuscript illustrations, this volume contains a full introductory discussion of the historical, cultural, literary and
stylistic contexts in which Paris wrote Edward’s life. An appendix of passages from the original text, a generous selection
of suggested further reading, and an index of proper names facilitate use of the volume in teaching. The volume has been carefully
designed so that its translations of text and rubrics from the extant manuscript can be used in conjunction with the
presentation of the manuscript on the web at www.lib.cam.ac.uk/MSS/Ee.3.59.
The volume inaugurates the French of England Translation Series, designed to make more widely available the large literary corpus
(nearly a thousand texts) composed in the French of England from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries. Although many such texts
have been given excellent editions by the Anglo-Norman Text Society, more general awareness of medieval England’s French texts
and records has often fallen between continental French scholarship and scholarship in medieval English. The works composed in the
French of England include important texts which deserve attention in their own right, and are also important to a fully informed
awareness of medieval English and Latin literature and historiography as participating in a multilingual culture in medieval Britain.
The series is academically edited by Thelma Fenster and Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, respectively professors of medieval French and
medieval English literature, and has commissioned a dozen further scholarly and accessible translations of works in the
French of England.
2008 / 166 + xvi pages / 978-0-86698-389-1 / MR 341 / $40, £24
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