Translatio studii
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Translatio studii means, literally, the "transfer of knowledge or learning" from one geographical place, and time, to another. It is a celebrated topos in medieval literature, most notably articulated in the prologue to Chretien de Troyes's Cliges, composed ca. 1170. There, Chretien explains that Greece was first the seat of all knowledge, then it came to Rome, and now it has come to France, where, by the grace of God, it shall remain forever more. K. Sarah-Jane Murray [1] has suggested that the origin of the topos of translatio, as articulated during the Middle Ages, comes from the Myth of Atlantis in Plato's Timaeus.
In the Renaissance and later, historians saw the metaphorical light of learning as moving much as the light of the sun did: westward. According to this notion, the first center of learning was Eden, followed by Jerusalem, and Babylon. From there, the light of learning moved westward to Athens, and then west to Rome. After Rome, learning moved west to Paris. From thence, enlightenment moved west to Amsterdam and London. The metaphor of "translatio studii" went out of fashion in the 18th century, but such English Renaissance authors as George Herbert were already predicting that learning would move next to America. The metaphor of the "dawning of reason" was also part of the metaphor of "enlightenment."
A pessimistic corollary metaphor is the "translatio stultitiae." As learning moves west, as the earth turns and light falls ever westward, so night follows and claims the places learning has departed from. The metaphor of the translatio stultitia informs Alexander Pope's Dunciad, and particularly book IV of the Greater Dunciad of 1741, which opens with the nihilistic invocation:
- "Yet, yet a moment, one dim Ray of Light
- Indulge, dread Chaos, and eternal Night!" (B IV 1-2)
- "Suspend a while your Force inertly strong,
- Then take at once the Poet, and the Song." (ibid. 7-8).
[edit] See also
- translatio imperii - (Latin: transfer of rule) - the geographic movement of temporal power
[edit] References
- K. Sarah-Jane Murray, "Reading Plato, Writing Romance," in From Plato to Lancelot (Syracuse University Press, 2008)
- ^ From Plato to Lancelot: A Preface to Chretien de Troyes (Syracuse University Press, 2008)
