Vulgo – ablativus ponitur adverbialiter – .i. ubique partout .i. quemunement,
publiquement vel per vulgum .i. inordinate, incondite, vulgariter.
Vulgaris et hoc .gare – .i. popularis, publicus, communis, manifestus
.i. publiques, quemuns. Vulgariter – adverbium – populairement,
publiquement. Vulgaritas .tatis – .i. popularitas, communitas vel publicatio,
manifestatio . . . Vulgo .gas .gatum – .i. publicare, manifestare
.i. publier, manifester. Vulgatus .a .um – .i. publicatus, manifestatus.
These definitions of terms relating to ‘vulgarity’ and the ‘vulgar’ are taken
from the learned Latin–French dictionary which Firmin Le Ver compiled at
the Carthusian house of St Honor´e at Thuison, near Abbeville, in the first
half of the fifteenth century. Public, popular, common, manifest . . . such
are the concepts deemed crucial here. Publicus should be understood as
appertaining to people in general (ad omnes generaliter), while popularis
has the sense of ‘belonging to or fit for the common people’, ‘available
to, directed towards the whole community, public’. Publicatio has the
pre-print culture sense of the transmission of information into ‘a public
sphere of discussion, debate, news, gossip, and rumour, in which things
were generally spoken of and generally known’. The various ways in
which these ideaswere negotiated in different medieval European languages
(in official, learned Latin and in demotic ‘vulgars’ or vernaculars) and in
both ‘high’ and ‘low’ cultural situations, are the subject of this book. That is
to say, ‘vernacular’ will be deployed in its fullest, richest sense, to encompass
acts of cultural transmission and negotiation (in which translation from
one language to another may play a major part, but not inevitably). By
such a procedure I hope to access some of the ways in which authority was
‘translated’, appropriated, disposed, exploited, and indeed challenged by
Middle English literature. Each of the following chapters is an essay in the
politics of translatio auctoritatis.