Translatio studii

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• Cortoisie is a synthesis of the superiority of French knighthood and learning, implying a new style of communication and attitude, especially regarding women.
• From cortoisie comes courtly love, a highly disciplined, self-denying, and respectful social form where the knight honors his lady as sacred.

History of the concept

Translatio studii was a celebrated topos in medieval literature, notably in the prologue to Chrétien de Troyes's Cligès, composed around 1170. There, Chrétien stated that Greece was first the seat of all knowledge, then it came to Rome, and now it has come to France, where it shall remain forevermore. In the Renaissance and later, historians saw the metaphorical light of learning moving westward like the sun. According to this notion, the first center of learning was Eden, followed by Jerusalem and Babylon, then Athens, then Rome, then Paris, and later London, though other nations such as Russia laid claim to the mantle, which would involve a retrograde motion.

The metaphor went out of fashion in the 18th century, but English Renaissance authors like George Herbert had already predicted learning would move next to America. A pessimistic corollary, translatio stultitiae, informed Alexander Pope's Dunciad, particularly book IV of the Greater Dunciad of 1741, which opens with a nihilistic invocation.

Etymology

The term translatio studii literally means 'translation of studies' in English, but the concept implies that the transmission of learning carried cultural ideals and information. According to Karlheinz Stierle, English is the current language of this transmission, just as Latin was in the first centuries after Christ. Politics and social issues now circulate in English, as they traveled along developing roads from Greece and Italy to England during medieval times. This carried over into Romance languages: the French word 'translation' and Italian 'traslazione' mean displacement of physical objects, while other words are used for translation in the English sense. Historically, translatio studii concerns the transfer of ideas that hold cultural value.

Translatio imperii

Translatio imperii often served as a precedent or coordinate to translatio studii. A transferral of rule assisted a transferral of culture, and vice versa, as the transfer of power conveys the reestablishment of culture in each new imperial power. Translatio studii provides an overview of intellectual heritage and is fundamentally concerned with texts, including reading, translating, commenting, interpreting, and rewriting. It is based on the assumption that human learning originated in Greece, from whence it spread westward to Rome and then France.

Ancient Greek and Roman theatre

All Roman comedy stems from Greek New Comedy, rewritten in Latin with adjustments to local taste and the long, narrow stage of Roman theatre, keeping conventional situations and stock character-masks. Roman theatre influenced Renaissance theatre; the nine Greek-style tragedies of Seneca are especially noteworthy for their profound influence on Renaissance tragedians. Conventions owed to Seneca include revenge tragedies, five-act structure, elaborate speeches, soliloquies, asides, violence and horror performed on stage, and an interest in the human condition, morality of nobility, and the supernatural. Rome also used the Greek language to aid the expansion of its power and secure a language for its empire.