The fifteenth-century Catalan translation of the French "Danse macabre": A critical edition and English translation, from manuscript Miscel·lània 26, Arxiu de la Corona d’Aragó, Barcelona

Translanguaging, Word and Image, and the Danse Macabre

“…The alignment of the images inside the abbey does not follow the order found in the early printed book based on the Parisian wall painting (Duchâteau, 2006;Hans-Collas, 2021: 86-8). It is identifiably a Danse Macabre but it does not reflect its supposed Parisian source, which is believed to be preserved most accurately in some manuscripts that are often not illustrated (Zvonareva, 2015;.…”

“…The challenge is to preserve the sense of the original, even when that text is obscure, but also to make it meaningful. This third and final section looks at the Dança de la Mort, an unillustrated Catalan translation of the French Danse Macabre (Zvonareva, 2015). In this instance, the "translanguaging space" is both textual (the manuscript) and contextual (the royal court at Barcelona).…”

“…Translation, including literary translation, played an important political role across medieval society (Classen, 2016: 289;Beer, 2019, Bak, 2016. The choice of a French source by a Catalan translator indicates competition between literary languages, as the Castilian Danza general was a near-contemporary or close predecessor of the French Danse Macabre and it remained popular well into the sixteenth century (Marin Gallo, 2021;Zvonareva, 2015: Morrás, 2014). The Catalan Dança de la Mort survives in one copy, followed by a continuation written around 1490 by the royal archivist Pere Miquel Carbonell (1434-1517) and his colleague Gaspar Nadal (Zvonareva, 2015;Massip and Morrás, 2014).…”

“…The choice of a French source by a Catalan translator indicates competition between literary languages, as the Castilian Danza general was a near-contemporary or close predecessor of the French Danse Macabre and it remained popular well into the sixteenth century (Marin Gallo, 2021;Zvonareva, 2015: Morrás, 2014). The Catalan Dança de la Mort survives in one copy, followed by a continuation written around 1490 by the royal archivist Pere Miquel Carbonell (1434-1517) and his colleague Gaspar Nadal (Zvonareva, 2015;Massip and Morrás, 2014). This second "dance" describes a gallery of officers of the court of King Ferdinand ii of Aragon (r. 1480Aragon (r. -1516.…”