The Translatability of Manuscript Pages Containing Old English Verse (with an Illustrative Translation of The Exeter Book, Folios 98r–101r and 124r–124v)

Abstract

Is a manuscript translatable? Those of us who study and interpret texts written before print culture are used to thinking of manuscript pages as things that are photographed, transcribed, and edited. And we use these manifestations variously in our work as researchers and teachers. But are manuscript pages translatable? That is, are the physical and visual features that bind folio and language translatable things? Within the field of AngloSaxon studies I wish to point this question toward codices containing Old English verse. Although images accompany some vernacular writings, most Old English poems were copied without images. This study will focus on the translatability of those folios filled with text only and concerns itself specifically with the visual fusion of poem and page rather than the sensory connections elicited by the material of the manuscript. I argue that translating the visual substance of the manuscript page along with the language of its poem has the potential to direct the Old English poem in translation back to the original work in a more genuine manner than most translation practice accomplishes. I ask the opening question within the context of Walter Benjamin’s notion of Ubersetzbarkeit: