Rewriting, compilation and manuscript context: the translation of the incest motive in Vida de Santa María Egipciaca

Abstract

The incest theme is relevant in the opening of the Libro de Apolonio, a Ms. Esc. K-III-4 13th-century Hispanic text composed in cuaderna vía. The codex transmits two other poems also of a clerical nature, although of different metric-estrophic form (irregular couplets of assonant rhyme instead of consonant): Vida de Santa María Egipciaca and Libro de los tres reyes de Oriente. In Vida de Santa María Egipciaca, the incest motive persists, while it is resignified through the medieval translation, which in this case significantly alters the French source of the poem. The present work seeks to deepen into the problem of medieval manuscript identity through a specific example of the translation of a motive of great development in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (incest) and, also, to consider the compilation dynamics of literature depending on its contextual character.