Middle English Translations of Medieval Encyclopedias

Abstract

A medieval encyclopedia was an educational text describing the natural and human worlds that was used primarily within an institutional setting such as a monastery, cathedral school, or university. A few encyclopedias were also sources for exempla used in medieval sermons both in Latin and in the vernacular languages. Only two such encyclopedias were translated into English: Bartholomaeus Anglicus’s De proprietatibus rerum was translated by John Trevisa in 1398/9, and a French version of Honorius Augustodunensis’s Imago mundi made by Gossouin of Metz in 1245–50 was translated by William Caxton as Mirrour of the World (printed 1480/1481 and 1490). These are both popular translations that render their originals rather literally than freely. Trevisa’s technique preserves the Latin terminology of the original, which suggests that his translation is meant to speed up searching for the English reader while it preserves the key terms of Bartholomaeus’s Latin. Caxton’s technique is to anglicize the original thoroughly, down to place-names and local color, while he also expands his original somewhat via his stylistic preference for restatement in doublets and triplets.