Rewriting Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale from Dryden, through Voltaire, to Niemcewicz: Medievalism or Modernisation?

Monika Coghen

Titles

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to track down the fortunes of cross-cultural transmission of The Wife of Bath’s Tale in the course of the 18th century. The continental interest in the tale was sparked off by Dryden’s adaptation in his Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700). Dryden’s version was rewritten by Voltaire as Ce qui plait aux dames (1764), which in turn was translated into Polish by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, and appeared in his collection Pisma różne wierszem i prozą (Various Writings in Verse and Prose, vol. I, 1803) as Co się damom podoba (What Pleases the Ladies). This trajectory of the Polish reception of Chaucer’s tale confirms the characteristic pattern of adaptations and translations of English literary works into Polish – from English through French into Polish, though it is not typical of Niemcewicz’s practice as a translator as he was one of the very few Polish translators translating directly from the English at the time. Thus, paradoxically to the 21st-century reader, the first, to my knowledge, Polish adaptation of The Wife of Bath’s Tale does not reveal an interest in Chaucer but rather confirms the dependence of late 18th- and early 19th-century Polish writers on French literary models. Likewise, differences in the representation of gender relationships between Chaucer’s romance and its eighteenth-century versions reveal that the agenda of the eighteenth-century adapters was rather catering to the taste of their contemporaneous readers than engaging with medieval English culture.

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to track down the fortunes of cross-cultural transmission of The Wife of Bath’s Tale in the course of the 18th century. The continental interest in the tale was sparked off by Dryden’s adaptation in his Fables, Ancient and Modern (1700). Dryden’s version was rewritten by Voltaire as Ce qui plait aux dames (1764), which in turn was translated into Polish by Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, and appeared in his collection Pisma różne wierszem i prozą (Various Writings in Verse and Prose, vol. I, 1803) as Co się damom podoba (What Pleases the Ladies). This trajectory of the Polish reception of Chaucer’s tale confirms the characteristic pattern of adaptations and translations of English literary works into Polish – from English through French into Polish, though it is not typical of Niemcewicz’s practice as a translator as he was one of the very few Polish translators translating directly from the English at the time. Thus, paradoxically to the 21st-century reader, the first, to my knowledge, Polish adaptation of The Wife of Bath’s Tale does not reveal an interest in Chaucer but rather confirms the dependence of late 18th- and early 19th-century Polish writers on French literary models. Likewise, differences in the representation of gender relationships between Chaucer’s romance and its eighteenth-century versions reveal that the agenda of the eighteenth-century adapters was rather catering to the taste of their contemporaneous readers than engaging with medieval English culture.

Keywords

Chaucer, The Wife of Bath’s Tale, Voltaire, Ce qui plait aux dames, Julian Ursyn Niemcewicz, Co się damom podoba, translation, adaptation, rewriting, gender, medievalism.

References

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Dryden J., Fables Ancient and Modern [in:] The Poems and Fables of John Dryden, ed. J. Kinslay, London 1969, p. 521–522.

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Niemcewicz, J.U., Co się damom podoba [in:] J.U. Niemcewicz,Pisma różne wierszem i prozą, vol. 1, Warszawa 1803.

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Spearing A.C., Rewriting Romance: Chaucer’s And Dryden’s Wife of Bath’s Tale [in:] Chaucer Traditions: Studies in Honour of Derek Brewer, ed. R. Morse, B. Windeatt, Cambridge 1990, p. 243–244.

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Works of M. de Voltaire, vol. 35, trans. T. Smollett, T. Francklin et al., London 1815.

Information

Information: Studia Litteraria Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis, 2017, Volume 12, Issue 3, pp. 175 - 185

DOI: https://doi.org/10.4467/20843933ST.17.014.7580

Article type: Original article

Titles:

Polish:

Rewriting Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale from Dryden, through Voltaire, to Niemcewicz: Medievalism or Modernisation?

English:

Rewriting Chaucer’s Wife of Bath’s Tale from Dryden, through Voltaire, to Niemcewicz: Medievalism or Modernisation?

Authors

Monika Coghen

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0572-2673

Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Gołębia 24, 31-007 Kraków, Poland

Published at: 22.01.2018

Article status: Open

Licence: CC BY-NC-ND

Percentage share of authors:

Monika Coghen (Author) - 100%

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English

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