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Article Dans Une Revue Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek Année : 2017

Flores Och Blanzeflor and the Orient: Depicting The Other In Medieval Sweden

Virgile Reiter

Résumé

This article aims to explore the representation of the Other in Flores och Blanzezflor, a 1312 translation of a French '"roman idyllique"', Le conte de Floire et Blanchefleur. As most of the action takes place in the Orient and as many of the main characters are pagan, including one of the main protagonist, Flores, Flores och Blanzeflor offers an opportunity to analyze how the Other was depicted in medieval Scandinavia. I argue in the present article that, probably influenced by the Germanic tradition, the translator chose to depict both the Orient and its inhabitants in a rather positive light. This Other, who appears to be almost the same as the society of the text's audience, allows to address the anxiety caused by the recent military success of the Saracens, an anxiety that seems to affect the Scandinavian elite despite their remoteness from the frontlines. One of the features that sets Flores och Blanzeflor apart from the other Eufemiavisorna is its setting: whereas Herr Ivan and Hertig Fredrik av Normandi take place in a mostly European setting, Flores och Blanzeflor takes the reader to the Orient for the vast majority of its plot. Only the first few verses and the last few take place in Europe (respectively in Spain and in France), the rest of the action is set between the realms of Apolis and Babylon, following Flores' attempt to rescue his beloved Blanzeflor. This also means that the vast majority of the characters depicted in Flores och Blanzeflor, including our hero Flores, are pagans: only Blanzeflor and her mother are initially Christians. This overabundance of "pagan" locations and characters in a work translated in 14 th century Sweden opens interesting avenues for the modern researcher looking for sources on the representation of the Other in medieval Scandinavia. While it is true that Flores och Blanzeflor is a (rather close) translation of the Norwegian Icelandic Flóres saga ok Blankiflúr, itself a translatio 1 of the French '"roman idyllique"' Le conte de Floire et Blanchefleur, I have argued in my PhD dissertation (Reiter, 2015) that the Swedish translator managed to produce a rather original work worthy of attention on its own merit rather than something to be dismissed as a "translation of a translation". This article will first focus on the depiction of the Otherness of both the locations and the characters appearing in Flores och Blanzeflor. This will lead me to show how the representation of 1 In the sense popularized by Rita Copeland (Copeland, 1995).
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hal-01937958 , version 1 (28-11-2018)

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Virgile Reiter. Flores Och Blanzeflor and the Orient: Depicting The Other In Medieval Sweden. Tijdschrift voor Skandinavistiek, 2017. ⟨hal-01937958⟩
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