Benvenutus Grassus: A study and translation of The Wonderful Art of the Eye.

Abstract

This project involves translating some of the pages of the manuscript’s “The Wonderful Art of the Eye”, written by Benvenutus Grassus, an ophthalmologist from the Middle Ages. The work used to carry on with the translation, is Grapheus, B., & Eldredge, L. M. (1996). The Wonderful Art of the Eye: A critical edition of the Middle English translation of his De Probatissima Arte Oculorum. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. The purpose of this paper is to prove how translating texts from Middle English to Present-Day English – or other languages from the past e.g. Old English, Latin, etc., is useful to learn about the culture and history of the times when those languages were spoken, in this case, the Middle Ages, and to maintain knowledge of the language they used, which was also part of their culture. All the history we know about the Middle Ages and other periods is due to professionals who have translated many manuscripts from different eras and can see how they lived and what their beliefs were. Some background information such as the origins of medicine and ophthalmology specifically is also provided in this paper as background information in order to understand the translation more effectively.