Translating Technology in the Middle English Floris and Blancheflour

Studies of the Middle English romance Floris and Blancheflour often approach it in relation to other medieval versions of this popular story, particularly its Old French source, and focus on the significance of changes that occurred during the process of translation. While this approach offers a productive avenue for considering the specific contexts and priorities of Middle English audiences, it also risks obscuring the significance of consistency as a deliberate translation choice, one that could nonetheless produce transformative readings as texts circulated in new social settings. This article argues that the urban environments and interests of a more socially diverse Middle English audience overwrote the foreign exoticism of the intricate Islamic hydraulic engineering that has been attributed to the French Floire et Blancheflor. Instead, the social and material context in which Floris was produced and read allows these technological details to be connected with localized concerns over resource management, complicating the text’s interest in questions of mercantilism, finance, and class identity.