Coda: Translating Chaucer’s Queynte

ABSTRACT This concluding coda reflects on how the difficulties of translating Chaucer’s obscene passages from Middle English to modern French can help us see the inherent complications of Chaucerian obscenity more clearly. The authors focus on the episode in the Miller’s Tale when Nicholas grabs Alisoun by the queynte and on how scholars are inclined to identify rude puns on queynte elsewhere in Chaucer’s poetry. One of the coauthors, a translator of Chaucer, discusses his approach to the task of task of translating Chaucer’s Middle English verse into modern French prose. The other coauthor, a coeditor of this special issue, reflects on how the process of translation defamiliarizes a seductively familiar passage.