About this book

There are many good reasons for presenting an edition of the anonymous fifteenth-century French translation of Alan of Lille’s Liber Parabolarum. First, it has never been edited and the 1492 print by Antoine Vérard survives in fewer than than a dozen copies. Secondly, as a part of European cultural history it is a significant example of the trend to the vernacularization of school texts which marked the later Middle Ages and ushered in the Renaissance.

The ‘mise en page’, comprising woodcuts, the Latin original, the French verse translation and a French prose commentary is also significant and instructive for the study of pedagogic method. In particular, the provision of a prose commentary yields further insight into medieval ‘explication de texte’ and moral exegesis. In addition the work offers a valuable illustration of the phenomenon of translation in the Middle Ages, shedding light on techniques of translation together with a variety of associated problems of adaptation and their solutions.

Furthermore, it earns a notable place in the history of French versification as a result of the author’s dazzling virtuosity which intermingles no fewer than 32 rhyme schemes. Last, not least in utility, it furnishes an ambitious addition to the stock of medieval paroemiologcal and sententious literature. Its value – cultural, technical, and lexical – is beyond doubt.

About the author

Tony Hunt is Besse Fellow and Tutor in French at St Peter’s College, University of Oxford.