Huon of Bordeaux: First Modern English Translation by Catherine M. Jones and William W. Kibler. Medieval & Renaissance Text Series. New York and Bristol: Italica Press, 2021, xxiii, 329 pp.

Abstract

Abstract: William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1595 or 1596) was based to some extent on the English translation of the Old French Huon of Bordeaux by John Bourchier, 2nd Baron Berners (1467–19 March 1533) from 1513 (not 1533, as Jones and Kibler state, xxi). Already before Shakespeare, a play with the title Hewen of Burdocize had been performed in 1593. A Middle Dutch translation had also made this text available to the non-French audience. Huon continued to be highly popular throughout the following centuries, apart from Shakespeare’s play, if we think, for instance, of Christoph Martin Wieland’s epic poem Oberon of 1780 or Goethe’s Faust I (1808). André Norton produced a free translation in 1951. After all, the text deals with the king of the fairies, with numerous secrets, magic, heroic adventures, a love affair with a Muslim princess who later converts to Christianity (of course), the conflict between Christians and Saracens, and criminal charges against the young protagonist and thus his conflict with Charlemagne.