ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on chivalric romance, a genre that reinvented itself with the advent of print. The translation of Melusine partakes in a long tradition of peninsular translations of French romances, a tradition preserved in medieval manuscripts and early editions. The transformation of animal features into distinctive birthmarks stands among the most striking examples of the chivalric transposition of the marvelous theme in the Historia de la linda Melosina. From the Basel German-language edition printed c. 1474 to the Spanish editio princeps of 1489, marvelous figures shape the narrative's course, downplaying the role of chivalric ideology. The transformations of chivalric discourse and rewriting of the marvelous tale through intervernacular translation point to the ways in which ideology and the economics of the marketplace impact the work of translation itself, and as such invite further study.
