Scholars have often viewed the Hundred Years War (c. 13371453) between England and France as sharpening animosity and isolationism. Further, medievalists have often characterized translatorsource relationships as adversarial. In Continental England, Elizaveta Strakhov develops a new model, reparative translation, as a corrective to both formulations. Zeroing in on formes fixes poetryand Chaucer as a leading practitionershe shows that translation played two essential, interrelated roles: it became a channel for rebuilding fragmented communities, and it restored unity to Francophone cultural landscapes fractured by war. Further, used in particular to express Englands aspirational relationship to Francophone culture despite the ongoing war, translation became the means by which England negotiated a new vision of itself as Continental rather than self-contained. Chaucers own translation work and fusion of Francophone and Italian humanist influences in his poetry rendered him a paradigmatic figure for Englands new bid for Continental relevance. Interpreting Chaucers posthumous canonization as a direct result of reparative translation, Strakhov shows how Englands transition from island to Continental constituent problematizes our contemporary understandings of nation-bound authors and canons.
Employs Chaucer as a lens to argue that Anglo-French translation of formes fixes poetry helped rebuild cultural ties between England and Continental Europe during the Hundred Years War.
