In a long introduction, she gives us the historical conditions that made the appearance of these comedies possible: in fact, these comedies are the first written in the vernacular and in prose, performed in 1508 and 1509 on the occasion of the carnival in Ferrara, the first regular comedies of the Renaissance, which would later become archetypes, and which have a real literary value. They had a real success with the public at the time, as erudite comedies, unlike popular comedies. The novelty also consists, she emphasizes, in the creation of a stage space, since the performance of these comedies takes place in the palace of the Duke of Este. Ariosto, she tells us, a courtier poet, is aware of being the inventor of a new genre, of a new classicism in the vernacular. It is a form of discreet revolution. These comedies of intrigue are early plays and Lena will be their culmination, paving the way for Bibbiena and Machiavelli. The author's significant contributions to comedy are the "giochi", the plays on words, situations, and language, which refer directly and explicitly to the tradition of Plautus and Terence but also to that of Boccaccio and burlesque poetry, more modern. Pauline Rougier highlights the concept of "uneasy comedy" which, in these early comedies, is embodied through the figure of fortune, the only one to allow a happy ending, since men are no longer responsible for their success (it is thanks to agnitio that The Comedy of the Chest ends well, and not thanks to the cunning of the valets or masters).
In the postface, she also offers a reflection on the language of the two pieces presented, a language that is comic in vulgar terms but which remains above all literary; the reflection on translation is particularly important and notably that on the translation of the dialect. She explains her lexical choices, the translation of proper names that refer to nature or animals and that would lose by not being translated, the inevitable losses of translation, the small obligatory compensations, she also underlines the translation of key words for the choice of lexicon such as fabula, storia, servitù (the distinction between famiglio, servitore and servo is tiny), ghiotto (which can mean 'glutton' of course but also 'perfidious' and 'scoundrel' when it is used for the character of Cléandre), the vocabulary of justice (lunghe will therefore be translated as 'procrastination', because it is a legal term meaning 'delay granted to a debtor for the execution of his commitments'), a principle of syntactic simplification that does not prevent keeping certain words at the end of the sentence if they are important, just like a desire to respect attacks, falls and repetitions. The greatest difficulty seems to lie in the translation of "gergo furbesco", the comic jargon in the Comédie du coffre: she chooses to use Villon's jargon which constitutes an original solution to transcribe the comic. Pauline Rougier insists in parallel on the problem of homonyms which provoke obscene double meanings, such as for example "Pris l'un pour l'autre" where we immediately find the meaning of dissimulation but also the sexual meaning of "prendre", the ambiguities created by the paronyms and the transpositions to be able to translate the puns (for example the change of letter: Cabane pour Catane).
The translation is fluid and modern, the comic language sometimes clashes with the literary language but it translates the dialect. The interest of this translation is undeniable because of its original character and the insertion in a very well explained literary and historical context, coupled with a solid reflection on the principles of translation.
Pascaline Nicou
Jean Monnet University – Saint-Étienne