12th- and 13th-Century Old French Prose Psalm Translations: An Attempt at a Representation of Textual Affinities

The paper centres around twelfth and thirteenth-century prose translations of the Psalms into Old French, including those identifiable as Anglo-Norman. Biblical translations into Old French in general and Psalm translations in particular have already been widely investigated. The extant Psalm translations into Old French are usually presented chronologically or grouped either according to their ­mise-en-page; their status as either a part of a complete Bible or separate texts; or the translation tradition to which they belong. In this last approach, it is usually however only the Oxford tradition that is clearly set apart, with the remaining texts not ascribed to definable groups. Thus, despite the rich history of studies concerning these texts, the affinities between them have not been discussed. In this study I will try to explore the textual relationships between these Psalm translations by means of cluster analysis, thus using mathematical values to express the extent of similarity and relationships obtaining between the renditions. The findings will be presented on dendrograms which allow visualisation of these relationships. Since the analysis needs to be conducted on normalised texts, factors such as spelling, conjugational or declensional variation will not interfere in the final picture, and thus proximity between the texts will not be clouded by their insular or continental provenance.