International Medieval Society, Paris • Société Internationale des Médiévistes, Paris

Symposium 2010 - Traditio
Abstract

Translation in Rutebeuf’s Miracle de Théophile

Emma Campbell, University of Warwick

One of the medieval textual traditions most invested in translatio as a textual, religious and cultural practice is vernacular hagiography, or writing about saints. My contention is that, alongside this investment in translation, the notion of the untranslatable – what Derrida has termed the traductible – emerges from within this corpus of texts as a force that significantly shapes its ideological enterprise.

This paper will explore important features of this argument in connection with Rutebeuf’s Miracle de Théophile (c.1255-64): the story of a destitute clergyman who, after making a pact with the devil sealed with a letter written in his own blood, subsequently realises his error, repents and is saved through the intervention of the Virgin. Rutebeuf’s text, which draws on both Latin and French sources, also explores questions of translation and appropriation in broader linguistic and spiritual terms. Théophile’s letter is, I suggest, a document that embodies a principle of translation while also failing to translate from one thing to another. The letter’s movement between different parties both underlines and creates the spiritual drama of the text, yet its origins and addressees seem to alter during the course of the story: what begins as Théophile’s undisclosed charter becomes an open letter written by the devil. I shall argue that the letter illustrates the way this text uses the traductible – as a form of translation which lacks both a point of departure and a fixed destination – to undermine notions of possession and appropriation which might be seen to underwrite an unethical – here, diabolical – model of translatio.