德文郡手稿的历史文化意义

The Historical and Cultural Significance of the Devonshire Manuscript

德文郡手稿是英国16世纪上半叶的一部诗歌集,除了收入杰弗里·乔叟、托马斯·怀亚特和亨利·霍华德的诗之外,主要收集了3位贵族女子创作和抄录的诗歌,而其中最引人注目的是一组记录玛格丽特·道格拉斯与托马斯·霍华德爱情悲剧的诗。玛格丽特是亨利八世姐姐(苏格兰王后)的女儿,与贵族青年托马斯相爱并秘密结婚。此时亨利八世刚刚处死了第二任王后安·博林,没有合法继承人,玛格丽特是最近的王位继承人,亨利怀疑托马斯与玛格丽特结婚是图谋王位,因此把二人都关进监狱(托马斯后来死在狱中)。在狱中他们写下了一组互诉衷肠、情深意切的爱情诗。本文通过对这组爱情诗及若干相关诗歌的翻译和分析,在探讨其语言、音韵特色的同时,考察其文化内涵及其与当时政治权力的关系。

The Devonshire Manuscript is a collection of poetry in the first half of the 16th-century England,containing poems by Geoffrey Chaucer,Thomas Wyatt,and Henry Howard,as well as poems written or copied by three noblewomen.The most notable of these is a group of love poems written by Margaret Douglas and Thomas Howard,who fell in love and married in secret.Margaret was the niece of Henry VIII,also then the nearest to the crown.Henry suspected that Thomas’intention to marry Margaret was for seizing the crown,so he imprisoned the young couple(Thomas later died in prison).They wrote to each other lyrical poems to express their love,their suffering for not being able to be together,their hope and despair.This essay translates and analyzes some of their love poems and several related poems from this manuscript,examining these poems’linguistic and phonetic characteristics alongside their cultural connotations and their relationship to the political power of the time.