The project of translating the Ovide Moralisé has spanned a decade, and, if taking into account the preliminary manuscript research, a decade and a half. It would never have started without the friendship and mentorship of the late Robert Fables, Arthur Marks ‘19 Professor of Comparative Literature at Princeton University, and acclaimed translator of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. During their last in-person meeting, he challenged Sarah-Jane Murray to “watch out for a text that wouldn’t let go,” and to translate it so that others might enjoy, and learn from, it.

Murray’s initial research on the Ovide Moralisé (OM) began in 2006, when Maud Simon, Laurence Harf-Lancner, and Michelle Szkilnik invited her to speak during an annual lecture series at the Centre d’Etudes du Moyen Age (CEMA) at the Sorbonne Nouvelle (Université de Paris III) in May 2007. The CEMA’s subsequent invitation of an affiliate research membership was a great source of encouragement and central to the decision to undertake what would become the translation project.

From 2007–2011, Murray traveled to consult all the surviving manuscripts of the OM, with support from the American Philosophical Society Franklin research award, a National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) summer stipend in the humanities, a research sabbatical from Baylor University, and a Big Twelve fellowship with the University of Texas at Austin. We both wish to thank the many special collections libraries who supported this research, into the OM manuscript tradition and contemporary manuscripts of Ovid, Ovidian commentaries, and theological works (like the writings of Bonaventure and Aquinas): The French National Library (BNF), the Rouen Municipal Library, the Vatican Libraries, the British Library, the Geneva Library, The Royal Library of Belgium, the Bern Municipal Library (Burgerbibliothek), the Municipal Library of Cambrai, the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, the Harry Ransom Center and the Libraries of the University of Texas at Austin, and the Royal Danish Library, who also granted permissions for the image on the cover of these volumes.

The translation itself was supported by a Critical Editions & Translations grant from the NEH, awarded to Murray between 2011 and 2016. We are grateful to our program director at the NEH, Ann Meyer (now at Georgetown University), who championed and supported the project throughout its duration.