Book Review: The Mélusine Romance in Medieval Europe: Translation, Circulation, and Material Contexts by Lydia Zeldenrust

Reviewed by:
Tania M. Colwell

LYDIA ZELDENRUST, The Mélusine Romance in Medieval Europe: Translation, Circulation, and Material Contexts. Studies in Medieval Romance. Cambridge, UK: D.S. Brewer, 2020. Pp. xii, 272. ISBN: 978–1–84384–521–8. £60/$99.

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Lydia Zeldenrust's fine examination of the Mélusine tradition across fifteenth- and sixteenth-century western Europe is a welcome addition to the scholarship of this romance which also broadens our understanding of the contemporary printing industry. Tracing how the French Mélusine romance acquired its status as a European bestseller through the production of vernacular translations and their transregional circulation in print, this study extends recent discussions highlighting the interdependence of medieval cultural networks beyond the national boundaries conventionally imposed upon studies of literary production (p. 10). The author [End Page 94] supplements her command of at least five medieval languages with an interdisciplinary blend of philological, art historical, and book historical approaches to analyze how linguistic, material, and geographic translations of the romance from French sources transformed the Mélusine tale for new audiences. Zeldenrust examines how translators, printers, and artists re-interpreted and reshaped the romance through the lens of the hybridity characterizing Mélusine and her sons (pp. 3–4). Chapter One analyzes the hybrid nature of Mélusine and her progeny and differences in their portrayals between the French prose Mélusine and poetic Roman de Parthenay. Subsequent chapters each focus on a specific translation context (German, Castilian, Middle Dutch, and Middle English), examining the corpus of surviving texts and likely sources, and bringing new editions to light. They then analyse the impact of the translation and its various reproductions on the re-presentation of Mélusine and her sons. This approach allows chapters to draw attention to both the idiosyncrasies within, and the characteristics shared across, individual translations.