The Imperial Implications of Medieval Translations: Old Norse and Middle English Versions of Marie De France's "Lais"

The authority of that cultural center is amplified by the dispersal of the imperial power of Christian ideology through missionary activity and religious dissemination.4 In England this becomes apparent when Anglo-Normans are installed in positions of power within the English Church after the Conquest and thus placed in control of the interpretation and representation of Christian ideas and principles.5 The interrelations between the ecclesiastic domain, education, and writing make literature the prime location for manifestations of imperial influence. The twelve lais have been preserved in only one complete Anglo-Norman manuscript, British Museum Harley 978, written in the mid thirteenth century in England.7 During the reign of Hákon Hákonarson (1204-63), king of Norway from 1217 to 1263, several translations from French literature into Old Norse were commissioned, ostensibly by the king himself, one of which was a collection of lais, called Strengleikar: "N bok bessor er hinn virðulege hacon konongr let norraena or volsko male ma hæita lioða bok. þui at af þæim sogum er þæssir bok birtir gærðo skolld i syðra brætlande er liggr i frannz lioðsonga" (This book, which the esteemed King Hákon had translated into Norse from the French language, may be called "Book of Lais," because from the stories which this book makes known, poets in Brittany-which is in France-composed lais).8 It contains eleven of Marie's Lais (Eliduc is omitted) along with ten other lais, some of which have no known Old French originals.9 The Old Norse text has been preserved in a single manuscript, Codex De la Gardie 4-7, dated approximately 1270, in the Uppsala University Library, which is no longer in a complete state.