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Eger, HungaryTHE USE OF THE WORD ISLE IN “MANDEVILLE’S TRAVELS” Abstract: In Mandeville’s Travels, a travel account written in French around 1356 and translated into English in the early 15th century, we encounter an intriguing word: isle. Besides its general sense ‘island’, it is often used in the sense ‘land, province, region’. The article examines this use and establishes a connection with the name of the French historical province Île-de-France. An alternative approach perceives a possible link between the use of isle in the Travels and the similar use of insula in the Vulgate Bible. Key words: isle, île, insula, Île-de-France, Mandeville Mandeville’s Travels is a travel account written in French around 1357. It was translated into English in the late 14th or early 15th century. The Travels immediately soared to lasting popularity. The author’s identity has not been established. He was thought to have visited all the places he described. He was esteemed both as a traveller and, to use Dr. Johnson’s [5] words, as “the father of English prose”. Later he was disgraced and referred to as the greatest liar. In recent years we can discern a trend towards his partial rehabilitation. The book still fascinates readers and scholars alike. A fresh summary of fact and fiction is available in [11]. In 1997 alone two full-length studies were published on the Travels: [3] and [7]. In the present paper we only set out to examine one single word ‘Mandeville’ used extensively. The English text of Mandeville’s Travels has been preserved in four versions. Two of them, the Cotton and the Egerton texts are complete. The present paper was made on the basis of the Cotton Version (British Museum MS. Cotton Titus C.xvi.) printed in [11] and the French Insular Version printed in [14]. The Egerton Version (Egerton MS. 1982) published in [14] has also been consulted. The author of the Cotton Version used a Southeast Midlands dialect, the Egerton Version was written in a more Northern dialect. Both main English versions date from the same period: late 14th or early 15th century. The Cotton Version adheres very closely to the French original. There are lists of was left untranslated throughout the Travels. This word of French origin had become mistranslations demonstrating the translator’s limited command of French. A number expressions. Of all the keywords the most challenging is undoubtedly the word isle. It of words were simply taken over from the original. These are exotic words which had no English equivalents. A travel book necessarily contains a variety of geographical part and parcel of the English language by that time. The native English synonym island never appears in the extant versions. The Oxford English Dictionary [9] and Webster’s Word Histories [15, p.244] supply the etymologies of island and isle telling us that they are etymologically distinct. Island can be traced back to the Old English igland, composed of the two elements ig and land. Land, as we might expect, means ‘land’. Interestingly, ig in Old English is a distinct word meaning ‘island’. It corresponds, inter alia, to Modern Norwegian øy ‘island’. In a sense then, we can interpret igland as ‘island-land’. Igland is a prehistoric North Germanic–West Germanic compound whose constituents and the compound form itself are well represented by corresponding forms in Germanic languages. Modern English isle is of French origin. In early Old French the form was isle, but when the It must be stressed again that nowhere in the available printed versions of the Travels do we find island. Even the Egerton Version consequently uses ile or yle. In the case of a similar pair of geographic concepts the Egerton manuscript translates French contree as land, but often retains cuntree. In the Cotton Version contree prevails against lond. In fact, contree is the most common loan word of French origin (314 instances). In expressions like the Holy Lond, however, only lond is used. In all versions isle is used exclusively spelt ile or yle. In the Cotton Version the spelling yle is of greater frequency. 75 per cent of all the occurrences are spelt in this way. In proper names it is always prefixed.. Below follow some examples illustrating this. Throughout the present paper the page numbers following the quotations refer to [11]. (1) from this ile of Rodes (p.19) (2) the ile of Crete (p.22) (3) in that ile of Cycile [Sicily] (p.40) This prefixed usage parallels precisely that of other geographical names: (4) thorgh the kyngdom of Hungarye (p.5) (5) of the contree of Egipt (p.32) (6) the ryuere of Danubee (p.5) (7) I Iohn Maundevylle knyght [...] hiderto haue ben longe tyme ouer the see and haue seyn and gon thorgh manye dyuerse londes and many prouynces and kyngdomes and iles; and haue passed thorghout Turkye, [...] thorgh Inde the Lasse and the More a great partie, and thorghout many othere iles that ben abouten Inde, [...] of whiche londes and iles I schalle speke more pleynly hereafter. (p.3) The quotation from the prologue (7) immediately perplexes us. Londes, prouynces, kyngdomes and iles appear to be synonyms. Here [12, p231] makes the following comment: “Medieval geographers thought that the continents of Europe, Asia, and Africa were surrounded by the Great Ocean Sea, in which were thousands of isles. Though ‘Mandeville’ makes almost every land an isle, the idea when applied to the Indian and Pacific oceans was by no means absurd.” A great number of easily identifiable geographical names can be found in the first half of the Travels which purports to be a guide-book to the Holy Land and Egypt. The second half describes the distant yles between the Holy land and Cathay. The farther we proceed eastwards the more difficult it becomes to locate the scenes of the marvels of the Orient. Besides its general sense ‘island’ yle is also frequently used in the sense ‘land, province, region’. (8) And beyonde the lond and the yles and the desertes of Prestre Iohnes lordshipe in goyinge streight towardes the est men fynde nothing but montaynes and roches fulle grete. (p.219) (9) From that kyngdom men comen in returnynge to another yle that is clept Ryboth [Tibet], and it is also under the Grete Chane. That is a fulle gode contree and fulle plentefous of alle godes and of wynes and frut and alle other ricchess. (p.224) (10) After this beyonde that vale is a gret yle where the folk ben grete geauntes of xxviii. fote longe or of xxx. fote long. And thei han no clothinge but of skynnes of bestes that they hangen upon hem. (p.205) (11) Into that yle dar no man gladly entren. And yif thei seen a schipp and men thereinne, anon thei entren into the see for to take hem. (p.205) Example (11) gives an instance of yle in the sense ‘island’. It immediately follows (10), which unmistakably refers to a continental yle, while (11) contains a direct reference to the sea and seafaring. Cases where the two meanings occur side by side are common. Cathay itself is referred to as an “isle” or a “province”. Yle is not associated exclusively with sea, it is the idea of isolation and remoteness that seems to prevail. In the Cotton Version of the Travels, yle appears 203 times. In the French version printed by Warner there are 196 occurrences of the French word isle. The statistics that follow below refer to the French text. It seemed preferable to study the French original for this purpose. To find out the meaning of French isle with a fair degree of accuracy necessitated the study of several editions with their critical apparatus. In the French text 118 instances (60,2%) seem to denote ‘island, peninsula, area near water’ i.e. an extended meaning compared to modern ‘island’. Three of these instances, which are given from the Cotton Version, seem to emphasize, by the addition of a prepositional phrase, the distinct nature of yles in the sea as opposed to inland ones. (12) And from Ephesim [Ephesus] men gon thorgh many iles in the see vnto the cytee of Paterane [Patera, in Asia Minor] where Seynt Nicholas was born. (p.16) (13) Afterward men gon be many yles be see vnto an yle that men clepen Milke [the Malaccas?]. (p.143) (14) And of that generacoun of Cham [Ham, son of Noah] ben comen the paynemes and dyuerse folk that ben in yles of the see be alle Ynde. (p.161) (13) and (14) closely follow the original version in Middle French. All these three examples as well as their Middle French models may reflect biblical usage. This is not surprising as Mandeville was according to [12, p.23] “an ecclesiastic, with a cleric’s knowledge of the Bible, and most likely a member of a regular order” and a “fluent reader of Latin”. The phrase insulae maris ‘islands of the sea’ occurs five times in the Vulgate. 26 further instances of yle in Mandeville’s Travels (13,3%) seem to refer to ‘land, region, province’. In the case of 52 occurrences (26,5%) it was impossible to find out the exact meaning. Very strict criteria were applied. An yle was considered a ‘land, region or province’ only if there was no surface of water around far and wide. Thus the ancient kingdom of Mancy in present-day Southern China would not be an inland yle in our statistics as it is relatively close to a sea. If we eliminate the latter category and only use a twofold division, we will find that roughly 80% of the occurrences represent ‘island’ as opposed to 20% denoting ‘country’. The “converted” results correspond to those of [1, p.384]. Ms Deluz studied an unprinted French version where Middle French isle occurs 185 times. She thinks that 79,5% of the occurrences mean ‘island’ and the rest (20,5%) mean ‘distant land’. The first example of isle in the Oxford English Dictionary [9] in the general sense dates from 1297. This dictionary does not mention the special use in the Travels. The editors of the English versions do draw the attention to the special use of isle in Mandeville’s Travels. In an appendix to the Penguin edition of the Egerton Version, Moseley [8, p.193] made a comment on the use of yle in Mandeville's Travels: “The world isle can certainly mean ‘island’, but often it suggests no more than a group of people living as a recognizable entity somewhere in the uncharted wastes whose borders and juxtapositions to other groups are ill defined.” The first occurrence of isle in the Middle English Dictionary [6] in the general sense is dated c1300(?c1225). The special use is cited from the entry ile [paragraph 2a. (a)]. The meaning given is ‘a domain, realm, province; also fig.’. Eight examples are cited from seven sources:
(15), (16) and (17) slightly antedate Mandeville’s Travels. In (17) the priority in time is not significant. In the earliest example (15) the word in question is used figuratively. Piers Plowman and Pearl do not translate French models but they are original English creations in the alliterative tradition. The main source of The Troy Book by John Lydgate is Guido delle Colonne’s Latin prose translation of the Historia Destructionis Troiae, itself a translation of the Roman de Troie of Benoît de Saint Maure. Mandeville’s Travels is, as we know, a close translation. The example in (19) is again from Lydgate. His poem The Fall of Princes relies on a French translation of Boccaccio’s De Casibus Virorum Illustrium. The Alliterative Revival produced The Destruction of Troy (20) and The Wars of Alexander (21) and (22), which again, are of native inspiration. The original English creations outnumber the works inspired by or simply translated from foreign models. In the quotation from Mandeville's Travels in (18) the author typically uses lond, roialme and yle almost interchangeably. Ynde is an embarrassingly vague entity compared to present-day India. Of the yle of Pentexoire we only know what is said in the example: Prester John’s kingdom is called ‘the yle of Pentexoire’. Warner’s notes to the Egerton Version [14, p.215] illustrate the scholar’s puzzlement: “The history of Prester John is that of a phantom, taking many forms; and there is scarcely a part of Asia, from Georgia to the extreme east, which has not been claimed as the seat of his sovereignty, until popular imagination, aided no doubt by the widely extended mediæval application of the term India, finally transferred it to Ethiopia or Abyssinia.” The study of the examples in [6] reveals that the word isle had been used in its extended sense for some time before the translation into English was made. In the earliest example (15) the word in question is used figuratively. The rest of the examples prove that in the late 14th and 15th centuries Middle English ile was relatively widely used in the sense ‘domain, realm, province’. The question arises whether the semantic extension took place in Middle English or already in late Old French? French etymological and historical dictionaries do not establish any possible semantic connection between isle and country. In fact, the original version of Mandeville's Travels is the only text in French where île can be found in the sense ‘land, country’. It must be mentioned, however, that the Mandeville manuscripts in French are not included in the corpus examined by the compilers of the important French historical dictionaries. This lack of interest is quite surprising if we consider the fact that over 250 Mandeville manuscripts survived in ten different languages. In French alone 61 manuscripts belonging to three main groups prove the tremendous popularity of the Travels. Nevertheless, interest in Mandeville in French soon ebbed away. The last two editions in French were printed in the Netherlands in 1729 and 1735, the last editions in France had appeared between 1550 and 1560. Interestingly, the two available Middle French editions appeared in England. French philology has deplorably neglected Mandeville’s Travels down to the present day. Apart from the Travels, the special use of the French word île seems to be restricted to only one isolated but all the more intriguing example: Île-de-France. It was first recorded in 1429 according to some sources or in 1434 according to others. All the dictionaries and encyclopaedias automatically say that this historical province is named so as it is surrounded by rivers. The rivers are the Seine, the Oise, the Thève, the Beuvron and the Marne. Having studied the Travels both in Middle French and Middle English as well as the works of reference which might represent indirect evidence, I would venture to interpret Île-de-France as ‘Land of France’. This matter is fully developed in [10]. In the 14th and 15th centuries both the French word and its English equivalent seem to have undergone a temporary semantic extension in their respective languages. It is impossible to prove whether they represent individual developments or influenced each other. If so, to what extent? It cannot be denied that Mandeville's Travels constitutes a link. The French data are restricted to the French versions of the Travels in Early Middle French. The oldest one was copied in 1371. By interpreting the first element in the expression Île-de-France as ‘Land of France’ we may have a new recorded evidence. This suggestion, however, defies the generally accepted explanation. On the other hand, the semantic extension in Middle English is adequately illustrated by examples in [6]. A completely different approach to the present issue might contribute to explain the origin of the special use of the word we are examining. In biblical usage isle seems to be extremely vague. The comments in annotated editions say that in the Old Testament the corresponding Hebrew and Greek words hiyyim and nesoi may represent any coastal areas other than those of Palestine including the coasts of Egypt. They may have reference not only to islands strictly speaking as the word is used today by geographers but they may denote the coasts of continents as well. Elsewhere, when biblical authors refer to the “isles afar off”, they seem to understand unknown and inaccessible regions beyond the sea. Most frequently they seem to refer to the familiar coasts of the Eastern Mediterranean. Sometimes even apparently precise locations turn out to apply to rather vague entities. Below follow occurrences in the Bible. The abbreviations referring to the Books of the Bible in the respective editions have been retained. The Modern English translations are all from the Oxford Study Bible [13] unless indicated otherwise. In Jeremiah we read in the Vulgate: (23) [...] depopulatus est enim Dominus Palestinos reliquias insulae Cappadociae (Ier 47,4) (24) [...] ‘for the LORD is despoiling the Philistines, that remnant of the isle of Caphtor.’ (Jer 47:4) Can Cappadocia be considered an insula? The name was applied at different times to territories of varying size. The example in (24) is cited among others in [6] under ile 2b.: (25) (a1382) WBible(1) Jer.47.4: The Lord forsothe destro3ede Palestynes, the remnauns of the yle [L insulæ] of Capadoche. The same passage in the King James Version [4] calls the Philistines (26) [...] the remnant of the country of Caphtor. The note given in [13, p. 835] to (24) identifies the isle of Caphtor as Crete, or possibly Asia Minor. The suggested alternatives contradict each other: Crete is an island while Cappadocia is evidently not. The Vulgate uses Cappadocia for Caphtor in Am 9,7 as well. In the New Testament, on the other hand, more particularly in the Acts of the Apostles, the islands in the Mediterranean are mostly referred to solely by their proper names e.g.: Samos, Crete, Rhodes. In the Revelation of John we also find (27) [...] in insula quae appellatur Patmos (Apc 1,9) [...] ‘on the island called Patmos’ (Rev 1:9) Insula is used in its usual sense. But later on in the final book of the New Testament we have two examples where probably more is implied than ‘island’ in the narrowest sense. (28) et caelum recessit sicut liber involutus et omnis mons et insulae de locis suis motae sunt (Apc 6,14) ‘The sky vanished like a scroll being rolled up, and every mountain and island was dislodged from its place.‘ (Rev 6:14) (29) et omnis insula fugit et montes non sunt inventi (Apc 16,20) ‘Every island vanished, and not a mountain was to be seen.’ (Rev 16:20) In (28) and (29) insula seems to refer vaguely to ‘firm land as opposed to abyss’. Or are these two instances simply doublets echoing montes? Even a rough-and-ready inventory of the possible English interpretations insula in the English translations must include at least the items: 1. island (in the geographical sense) 2. coastland of the Mediterranean 3. distant, unknown region 4. the inhabitants of these islands, coastlands and distant regions 5. other specialized meanings such as ‘firm land as opposed to abyss’. The Old Testament usage figures in [6]: (30) ile 2b.?In O.T. usage: a land on the seacoast, a coastland; also the people of such lands. Six examples are given to illustrate (30) including the one cited in (25). Modern translations simply use isle or island. The King James Version [4] usually gives isle in the Old Testament and island in the New Testament. Annotated editions provide notes to highlight the polysemy of the word. As many as twenty times does the Oxford Study Bible evade the trap of superficial translation by using two words instead of one to render insula as in the example taken from Ezekiel. (31) universi habitatores insularum obstipuerunt super te [...] (Ez. 27,35) ‘All who dwell on the coasts and islands are aghast at your fate. [...] (Ezek 27:35) Here the King James Version [4] only says: (32) All the inhabitants of the isles shall be astonished at thee. [...] In the Vulgate Bible [2] the word insula occurs 51 times. If we insist obstinately on fitting them into the above categories, we encounter the same difficulty as in the case of identifying the elusive meaning of the word isle in Mandeville’s Travels. As mentioned earlier, the polysemy of insula closely follows that of the Hebrew original. Before the Reformation the Bible existed primarily in Latin, in Jerome’s 4th century translation known as the Vulgate. The early translations into native languages were also from the Vulgate as in (25). Although insula was not the ultimate but only the immediate source, its automatic rendering transferred its polysemy to English. Did the biblical use of the word isle exert any influence on the extension of the use of ile in Middle English or in Middle French? The present contribution merely aimed at drawing attention to the occasional parallels in using the word isle in the Middle French original of Mandeville’s Travels, its translation into Middle English and the occurrences of the same word in biblical, especially Old Testament texts. 1. Deluz, Christiane. 1988. Le Livre de Jehan de Mandeville, une «géographie» au XIVe siècle. Textes, Études, Congrès, No 8, Louvain-la-Neuve: Publications de l’Institut d’Études Médiévales. 2. Gryson, Roger (ed.). 1994. Biblia Sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem. 4th ed. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft. 3. Higgins, Iain Macloed. 1997. Writing East. The “Travels” of Sir John Mandeville. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 4. The Holy Bible, n.d. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 5. Johnson, Samuel. 1755. “History of the Language” prefixed to the Dictionary. London: Longman. 6. Kurath, Hans-Sherman M. Kuhn-R.E.Lewis (eds.). 1952ff. Middle English Dictionary. Ann Arbor/Michigan: Michigan University Press. 7. Milton, Giles. 1997. The Riddle and The Knight. In Search of Sir John Mandeville. London: Allison and Busby Ltd. 8. Moseley, C.W.R.D. 1983. The Travels of Sir John Mandeville. London: Penguin Books. 9. Murray, J.A et al. 1933. The Oxford English Dictionary. 13 vols. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10. Őrsi, Tibor. 1997. L’Île-de-France est-elle un île? Contribution à l’évolution du sens du mot “île”. Proceedings of the 16th International Congress of Linguists. Paper No. 0412. Oxford: Pergamon. 11. Seymour, M.C. (ed.). 1967. Mandeville’s Travels. Oxford: Clarendon Press. 12. Seymour, M.C.. 1993. Sir John Mandeville. Authors of the Middle Ages 1. English Writers of the Late Middle Ages: General Editor M.C. Seymour. Aldershot: Variorum. 13. Suggs, M. Jack-Sakenfeld, Katharine Doob-Mueller, James R. (eds.). 1992. The Oxford Study Bible. Revised English Bible with the Apocrypha. New York: Oxford University Press. 14. Warner, G.F. (ed.). 1889. The Buke of Sir John Maundeuill. Westminster: The Roxburghe Club. 15. Webster’s Word Histories. 1989. Springfield: Merriam-Webster Inc., Publishers. жүктеу/скачать 6.62 Mb. Достарыңызбен бөлісу:
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