The Shackled Muse Medieval Latin Translators and Poetry in Greek Philosophers

In the medieval and early modern periods, Latin translators of Greek philosophical texts were faced with the difficult task of providing renderings of the poetic quotations that their sources contained. Their approaches clearly show that their usual translation method was not adapted to the challenge that they – unwillingly – had to take on. In this article, I present a selection of illustrative samples of various methodologies applied by medieval translators. I compare the results with the efforts produced by their humanist counterparts, who typically claimed to have had a greater mastery of both source and target languages. Finally, I attempt to sketch a theoretical framework for the translators’ endeavours using insights borrowed from modern translation studies