WRITING AUTHORITY IN LATE MEDIEVAL ... - Cornell University

manhiede,/That thou ne be noght lich a beste” ‘For this my son, listen well so to lead your
manhood/self that you do not be [become or act] like a beast.’
In fact, the Portuguese translation does away with all of the ambiguities presented by the
moral of the English tale. First, Nebuchadnezzar’s change no longer mimics an Ovidean loss of
“manhiede” but the disastrous result of stepping outside God’s law. Second, there is no longer a
danger to thinking that the king’s contrition is null due to the king’s beastly state. Because the
Portuguese translation explicitly links beastliness to sinfulness, Nebuchadnezzar’s contrition
represents a human state even if he behaves in the likeness, the similitude, of a beast. Lastly, the
Portuguese renders Genius’s ambiguous warning to guard “manhiede” so as to not “be lich a
beast” as “feito semelhante aa bestia” ‘made into the likeness of a beast,’ suggesting that pride
and not humility is what the story links to beastliness. If one breaks God’s law from which
“nehŭu po de seer parçeiro” ‘no one can be parted,’ then one should expect to receive a
punishment outside a common humanity—that is, in the similitude of a beast.
Further, the Portuguese’s return to a more direct moral way to explicate the tale explains
why it omits the main change Gower contributes to this biblical story: the imagistic and comical
picture of Nebuchadnezzar’s braying repentance, which is translated this way:
E pensando esto cahiu em chãao e pero que lhe mingou a falla, alçou as mãos ao alto em sua
bestial maneira e fez seu planto ataa os çeeos. E em su oraçom devotamente demandave senpre
merçee ficandose em giolhos o milhor que podia.
And thinking this, [the king] fell on the ground, and because speech failed him, he raised his hands
above in his beastly form/ability, and he made his plaint/cry towards the heavens, and in his
prayer, he devoutly asked always mercy supporting himself in his knees the best that he could. 219
The abrupt mis-translation of Nebuchadnezzar’s repentance is a result of translating “lich” as
“semelhança” ‘similitude’ and not as “commo.” Since the king’s beastly actions come from his
219 Faccon 445, Lines 246-250.
133