Low Fancy

Shannon Hengen is an assistant professor of English at Laurentian
University and the author of Margaret Atwood’s Power: Mirrors,
Reflections and Images in Select Fiction and Poetry.

The purpose of this book, to render a contemporary translation of the
medieval Carmina Burana, seems essentially compelling and useful.
Wandering students in 12th- and 13th-century Europe who wrote songs
about their travels, pleasures, and concerns provided interesting
commentary on an age dominated by clergy and church dogma, and a fresh
translation of their writing would tell us much about that age in
comparison with our own.

While the author remains faithful to the accentual rhythm of the
original medieval Latin, she does not otherwise attempt to contextualize
the songs. Rather, as the book jacket states, she “makes use of
various types of translation (identification with the text, use of the
text as a means of experimentation, physical abuse of the text and
extension beyond it) in order to examine specific linguistic and social
histories, and to engage their contemporary traces.” Such an approach,
like any other, has value only if the translations themselves engage the
reader. These do not.

Although moments of lucidity appear to tantalize the reader into
imagining the sensual wit of the original, moments of opacity dominate.
The language, however musical, is often unintelligible, and one wonders
why songs that were popular when written and performed are made obscure
and inaccessible here.

Franзois Houle has contributed several playful and intriguing scores
for parts of songs, and these successfully recall the first purpose of
these medieval lyrics—to entertain. But Strang’s skill with words
seems misused—or “abused,” to paraphrase the quotation on the
jacket—since neither the poststructuralist theory that seems to
motivate her nor the medieval world that is her subject is served by
this book. Its difficulty makes it accessible only to a rare few.