Neo-Latin Languages

Abstract

This section surveys translations from contemporary European vernaculars, with a focus on literature in Frankish Greece, and texts such as the War of Troy, the Chronicle of Morea, and adaptations of western romances. The survey is introduced by a general discussion of translation in the Middle Ages—which allowed for many forms of adaptation, including expansion, abridgment, and the complete rewriting of a given model—and the socio-political contexts and contact zones in which such translation activity took place in Byzantium, the dominant culture being always the giver and the dominated the receiver.