'Reducing into English': Translation as Alchemy in the Prologues and Epilogues of William Caxton

Abstract

WILLIAM CAXTON, in his prologue to Malory’s Morte Darthur, claims that Malory took French books and ‘reduced’ them into English: ‘Syr Thomas Malorye dyd take oute of certeyne bookes of Frensshe and reduced it into Englysshe’.1 Caxton claims to have done the same himself in the Eneydos, in Charles the Great, and in several other works: ‘I have enprysed and concluded in myself to reduce this sayd book into our Englysshe … ’ (Charles the Great, 67). While Caxton clearly refers in these passages to translation as a process of reduction, it is not immediately clear what connotations the term reduce carries. The Middle English Dictionary lists several meanings for reducen, among them (1a) to correct; (1b) to restore; (2) to recall or repeat; (3) to analyse and to interpret. The fourth meaning in the dictionary includes translation: 4. (a) To change (sth.) back; change (sth.), transform; alch. reduce; translate (a book); apply (sth. to a new or specific use); (b) to diminish (sth.); summarize (a discussion); (c) to reduce (a town to subjection).2 [emphasis added]