The Romance Hero in Translation: Beauty, Reputation, and Identity in Partonopeu de Blois and Partonope of Blois

Abstract: This article offers a comparative study of the Old French romance Partonopeu de Blois and its fifteenth-century Middle English translation, focused on their different approaches to beauty and visual description in the construction of the romance hero. While beauty is a key feature of the protagonist’s characterization, scholarship on the Middle English romance has not approached the significant changes and omissions it operates in this regard. The omission of lavish description has traditionally been regarded as a common, and often deprecated, trend in Middle English romance, in line with a tendency to simplify plot. I argue, instead, that the translation’s omission of visual descriptions, associated with an accrued interest in reputation, is highly significant and makes space for the construction of a different and more subjective form of literary identity. My study suggests that this shift is the result of cultural and textual processes of literary transmission in the genre of the romance.