Abstract
The present article focuses on ff. cxlr-cviiir of the manuscript Miscel?lania 26, Arxiu de la Corona d’Arago, Barcelona, which contain the only extant version of the fifteenth-century Catalan translation of the French Danse macabre. The article contains a philological study of this section of the manuscript, with particular attention to the relationship between the Catalan version of the Danse macabre and its French sources: this study serves as an introduction to a new critical edition of the Catalan translation proposed in the second part of the article. The critical text consists of a parallel edition of the Catalan version and manuscript lat. 14904, Bibliotheque nationale de France, Paris (MS BnF lat. 14904), which proves to be the witness of the French poem closest to the lost exemplar used by the Catalan translator. Both editions aim at finding a balance between readability and a conservative approach which preserves the historical character of the manuscripts. The critical text is preceded by editorial criteria and accompanied by a literal translation into modern English and editorial notes.
Highlights
This article aims at providing a new critical edition of the only extant manuscript version of theDança de la Mort, a fifteenth-century Catalan translation of the famous Danse macabre of the Cemetery of the Innocents in Paris
Another feature that makes Carbonell’s sequel interesting in the context of the whole Dance of Death tradition lies in the fact that the group portrait painted by Carbonell is not universal, but restricted and concrete: the poem represents the hierarchy of different employees placed in the administration of the Crown of Aragon, and it contains allusions to people still alive, the author gives no name
Besides four female characters mentioned above, the Dança de la Mort adds the Notary: this element closely matches the structure of Lydgate’s English translation of the Danse macabre – more precisely, the structure of the version found in one branch of the manuscript tradition of this poem – where we find the Abbess, the Noble Lady, the Woman in Love and the Juror
Summary
Dança de la Mort, a fifteenth-century Catalan translation of the famous Danse macabre of the Cemetery of the Innocents in Paris. Carbonell does not alter the structure of the text he copies, but adds a second Dance of Death after the first one, conceiving it as an autonomous poem and demarcating his own new text from its prototype Another feature that makes Carbonell’s sequel interesting in the context of the whole Dance of Death tradition lies in the fact that the group portrait painted by Carbonell is not universal (the entire society, as it is in the majority of the examples of the Danse macabre genre), but restricted and concrete (the royal court in Barcelona): the poem represents the hierarchy of different employees placed in the administration of the Crown of Aragon, and it contains allusions to people still alive, the author gives no name. This places the Catalan translation from manuscript B in the broad tradition of transmission and consumption of French texts in the fourteenth and fifteenth-century Crown of Aragon.
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