Month: July 2023

Newsflash from Rome: Chaucer in Polish

We were very pleased to hear from Laurence Warner that the Medieval Symposium at last week’s International Association of University Professors of English (IAUPE) conference in Rome included a presentation by Professor Ewa Kujawska-Lis on “Canterbury Tales in Polish.” Of course, we contacted Ewa right away. She kindly provided précis of her paper for us to share with the Global Chaucers community. We look forward to learning more from her as she expands our knowledge of Chaucer’s long and deep presence in Polish translations and scholarship.

by Ewa Kujawska-Lis, Director of the Institute of Literary Studies, Faculty of Humanities,
University of Warmia and Mazury in Olsztyn, Poland

In Poland, Chaucer’s artistry was first noticed by two outstanding literary figures (poets, writers, and journalists): Ignacy Krasicki (1735-1801) and Adam Mickiewicz (1798-1855). Well acquainted with European literature, they offered appreciative comments on the English poet almost a century before any Polish translation was available. Readers needed to wait until 1907 to get the feel of Chaucer themselves. This is when Jan Kasprowicz (1860-1926), a poet, playwright, critic, and translator, included fragments of The General Prologue and a large section of The Friar’s Tale in his anthology Poeci angielscy (English Poets). The translation, consisting of about 20 pages, served as an introduction of Chaucer to the Polish literary system and was based on the edition of The Canterbury Tales by Thomas Tyrwhitt (1775-78) and a German translation by Wilhelm Hertzberg (1866).

Half a century later, in 1956 Przemyslaw Mroczkowski published his monumental study Opowieści kanterberyjskie na tle epoki (The Canterbury Tales against the backdrop of the epoch), originally written in 1951, which was a milestone in introducing Chaucer to Polish scholars in the vein of what would be in the future termed cultural poetics. Subsequently, in 1988, he also translated The Knight’s Tale.

This served as a complement to the first more extensive translation of The Canterbury Tales into Polish that was created by Helena Pręczkowska and published in 1963 (Wrocław: Zakład Narodowy Im. Ossolińskich, 1963; reprinted in 1978 and 1987) (image at left). This volume included The General Prologue and eleven Tales selected by Witold Chwalewik, based on his rather arbitrary decision as to which stories should be translated.

Finally, the complete translation of The Canterbury Tales was published in 2022 as the second volume of a non-commercial series Bibliotheca Translata by the publishing house Biblioteka Śląska (image at top). The translation was done by Jarek Zawadzki, a translator of literature from English and Chinese, based on Walter W. Skeat’s edition of 1894, with illustrations by Maciej Sieńczyk, a graphic artist, illustrator, comic book creator.

Chaucer in Japan (two conferences!)

[CAPTION: obligatory photograph of Hiroshima Castle as it looks today with blooming cherry blossoms in the foreground.]

We’re very happy to help spread the word about these two upcoming conferences in Hiroshima, Japan; thanks to Global Chaucers blog contributor Jonathan Fruoco for sending along this information!

The 2023 Hiroshima International Conference, 7 August 2023; co-organized by Yoshiyuki Nakao and Jonathan Fruoco: “In sondry ages and sondry londes: Global Chaucer in the XXIst Century,” with invited lectures by Stephanie Trigg and Anthony Bale. Click on images below to see enlarged versions of the program.

From Jonathan Fruoco:

We may have been living in the XXIst century for two decades but the challenges of keeping medieval literature relevant for another hundred years have yet to be addressed. In this conference, we thus offer to consider what academics can do to continue transmitting a universal linguistic and literary inheritance that has survived since the Middle Ages.

The fact that this conference will be held in Japan is proof enough of the universality of the cultural relevance of medieval literature in a culturally diverse environment. Yet, in large parts of the world, medieval studies have started to disappear from universities, showing in a way our failure to keep our inheritance alive. Such is, for instance, the case in France where the works of Geoffrey Chaucer, the most French of English poets, have almost disappeared from memories.

During this conference, we accordingly invite colleagues from Asia to reflect on how we may encourage a new generation of readers and scholars to support medieval studies in a non-Anglophone environment. The translation and re-translation of the works of medieval poets might, for instance, be a way to reintroduce poets to a new audience — see for instance the recent translation of the Canterbury Tales in Japanese by a team of scholars, or the work accomplished by non-Anglophone translators throughout the world. This would lead us to question the difficulties (linguistic, but not only) of translating/adapting Middle English in different languages, and of finding audiences.

The 63rd Summer Seminar of the English Research Association in Hiroshima, 8 August 2023; Jonathan Fruoco and Anthony Bale are among the invited speakers.