English Translations of Obscure Medieval Texts Go Online

Stanford University’s Global Medieval Sourcebook is a new online compendium of English translations for overlooked Middle Ages texts.

Many of the selections were popular when they were written, but were later overlooked by scholarship as lowbrow, and thus left untranslated. “The Drunkard,” a Middle High German 13th-century narrative verse, has 416 lines about a most epic inebriate: “However large the vessel might have been / It was not big enough for his drink, / unless one continually refilled it.” Another Middle High German 13th-century narrative verse — “The Gosling” — is a rather bawdy tale of a young monk who sets out from the monastery into a world of which he is ignorant. When he first sees a woman, he asks his abbot what she is, and the abbot attempts to dissuade him by saying women are “geese”: “The monk said: ’ My goodness! / Geese are lovely. / Why don’t we have geese? / They would fit in nicely / on the pasture at the monastery.’” Needless to say, the monk is soon seduced, and the abbot deeply embarrassed. Both of these texts demonstrate knowing humor, and a bit of playful depravity, not always associated with medieval manuscripts.