Old French Narrative Cycles

Old French Narrative Cycles

Author: Luke Sunderland

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 222

ISBN-13: 1843842203

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Detailed readings of four major medieval cycles. This is a study of four colossal medieval works - the Cycle de Guillaume d'Orange, the Vulgate Cycle, the Prose Tristan and the Roman de Renart - which are normally considered separately. By placing them side-by-side for analysis, Luke Sunderland is able to argue for an aesthetic of cyclicity that cuts across genre. He combines detailed readings of the narrative infrastructure of each cycle with attention to the shifts and transformations that come with successive acts of rewriting. Old French Narrative Cycles focuses in particular on revisions and controversies around heroic figures, arguing that competition between alternative heroes within these texts makes them a discourse on heroism. Using a theoretical framework deriving from Lacanian psychoanalysis, the study reveals anxieties surrounding the hero's relationship to the "good" the hero oscillates between support for moral ideals and subversive assertions of freedom that can lead to evil and death. Ultimately, it is contended that the instability of the hero as conduit for morality produces textual confusion and generates the myriad differing versions of these vast and perplexing works. LUKE SUNDERLAND is Lecturer in the School of Modern Languages and Cultures, University of Durham.


Representing the Dead

Representing the Dead

Author: Helen J. Swift

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 356

ISBN-13: 1843844362

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An examination of how the dead were memorialised in late medieval French literature.


Founding Feminisms in Medieval Studies

Founding Feminisms in Medieval Studies

Author: Laine E. Doggett

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 276

ISBN-13: 1843844273

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Essays using feminist approaches to offer fresh insights into aspects of the texts and the material culture of the middle ages. Feminist discourses have called into question axiomatic world views and shown how gender and sexuality inevitably shape our perceptions, both historically and in the present moment. Founding Feminisms in Medieval Studies advances that critical endeavour with new questions and insights relating to gender and queer studies, sexualities, the subaltern, margins, and blurred boundaries. The volume's contributions, from French literary studies as well as German, English, history and art history, evince a variety of modes of feminist analysis, primarily in medieval studies but with extensions into early modernism. Several interrogate the ethics of feminist hermeneutics, the function of women characters in various literary genres, and so-called "natural" binaries - sex/gender, male/female, East/West, etc. - that undergird our vision of the world. Others investigate learned women and notions of female readership, authorship, and patronage in the production and reception of texts and manuscripts. Still others look at bodies - male male, female, neither, and both - and how clothes cover and socially encode them. Founding Feminisms in Medieval Studies is a tribute to E. Jane Burns, whose important work has proven foundational to late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century Old French feminist studies. Through her scholarship, teaching, and leadership in co-founding the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship, Burns has inspired a new generation of feminist scholars. Laine E. Doggett is Associate Professor of French at St. Mary's College of Maryland, St. Mary's City; Daniel E. O'Sullivan is Professor of French at the University of Mississippi. Contributors: Cynthia J. Brown, Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, Kristin L. Burr, Madeline H. Caviness, Laine E. Doggett, Sarah-Grace Heller, Ruth Mazo Karras, Roberta L. Krueger, Sharon Kinoshita, Tom Linkinen, Daniel E. O'Sullivan, Lisa Perfetti, Ann Marie Rasmussen, Nancy Freeman Regalado, Elizabeth Robertson, Helen Solterer


The Medieval New

The Medieval New

Author: Patricia Clare Ingham

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2015-04-07

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0812291239

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Despite the prodigious inventiveness of the Middle Ages, the era is often characterized as deeply suspicious of novelty. But if poets and philosophers urged caution about the new, Patricia Clare Ingham contends, their apprehension was less the result of a blind devotion to tradition than a response to radical expansions of possibility in diverse realms of art and science. Discovery and invention provoked moral questions in the Middle Ages, serving as a means to adjudicate the ethics of invention and opening thorny questions of creativity and desire. The Medieval New concentrates on the preoccupation with newness and novelty in literary, scientific, and religious discourses of the twelfth through sixteenth centuries. Examining a range of evidence, from the writings of Roger Bacon and Geoffrey Chaucer to the letters of Christopher Columbus, and attending to histories of children's toys, the man-made marvels of romance, the utopian aims of alchemists, and the definitional precision of the scholastics, Ingham analyzes the ethical ambivalence with which medieval thinkers approached the category of the new. With its broad reconsideration of what the "newfangled" meant in the Middle Ages, The Medieval New offers an alternative to histories that continue to associate the medieval era with conservation rather than with novelty, its benefits and liabilities. Calling into question present-day assumptions about newness, Ingham's study demonstrates the continued relevance of humanistic inquiry in the so-called traditional disciplines of contemporary scholarship.


Authorship and First-person Allegory in Late Medieval France and England

Authorship and First-person Allegory in Late Medieval France and England

Author: Stephanie A. V. G. Kamath

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 1843843137

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An examination of medieval vernacular allegories, across a number of languages, offers a new idea of what authorship meant in the late middle ages. The emergence of vernacular allegories in the middle ages, recounted by a first-person narrator-protagonist, invites both abstract and specific interpretations of the author's role, since the protagonist who claims to compose thenarrative also directs the reader to interpret such claims. Moreover, the specific attributes of the narrator-protagonist bring greater attention to individual identity. But as the actual authors of the allegories also adapted elements found in each other's works, their shared literary tradition unites differing perspectives: the most celebrated French first-person allegory, the erotic Roman de la Rose, quickly inspired an allegorical trilogy of spiritual pilgrimage narratives by Guillaume de Deguileville. English authors sought recognition for their own literary activity through adaptation and translation from a tradition inspired by both allegories. This account examines Deguileville's underexplored allegory before tracing the tradition's importance to the English authors Geoffrey Chaucer, Thomas Hoccleve, and John Lydgate, with particular attention to the mediating influence of French authors, including Christine de Pizan and Laurent de Premierfait. Through comparative analysis of the late medieval authors who shaped French and English literary canons, it reveals the seminal, communal model of vernacular authorship established by the tradition of first-person allegory. Stephanie A. Viereck Gibbs Kamath is Assistant Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Boston.


«Par deviers Rome m’en revenrai errant»

«Par deviers Rome m’en revenrai errant»

Author: Autori Vari

Publisher: Viella Libreria Editrice

Published: 2017-08-02T00:00:00+02:00

Total Pages: 651

ISBN-13: 8867289055

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Il volume raccoglie gli atti del XXème Congrès International de la Société Rencesvals pour l’étude des épopées romanes (Sapienza - Università di Roma, 20-24 luglio 2015) e presenta lo stato dell’arte e le ricerche in corso sull’epica romanza medievale propriamente detta, sulla sua posterità nell’età moderna e sulla produzione non romanza a essa correlata, offrendo un panorama ricco ‒ se non completo ‒ degli attuali orientamenti scientifici e dei risultati raggiunti. Per il congresso di Roma ‒ cui hanno preso parte studiosi provenienti dall’Europa, dal Nord e dal Sud America e dall’Africa ‒ sono stati proposti i seguenti temi: I. Rome et l’Italie dans les chansons de geste; II. Phénomènes de cyclisation: grandes et petites gestes; III. Le XVe siècle: proses et renouvellements; IV. L’histoire des recherches sur la matière de France; a questi si aggiungono gli interventi raccolti nella sezione Varia.


L’Humain et l’Animal dans la France médiévale (XIIe-XVe s.)

L’Humain et l’Animal dans la France médiévale (XIIe-XVe s.)

Author: Irène Fabry-Tehranchi

Publisher: Rodopi

Published: 2014-08-01

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 9401211078

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Ce recueil explore les relations mouvantes entre hommes et animaux, aussi bien réels que fantastiques, dans la France médiévale, dans une perspective interdisciplinaire. Les auteurs examinent la façon dont le rapport humain-animal a été imaginé, défini et remodelé dans la pensée, la culture et la production artistique du Moyen Age. La distinction entre l’humain et l’animal, fondamentale dans le texte biblique et la philosophie antique, a été remise en question au cours du XIIe siècle. Ce phénomène transparaît dans la terminologie utilisée pour désigner les animaux, dans leur représentation dans les arts et la littérature, et dans l’évolution de textes fondamentaux comme le Physiologus ou les bestiaires. Les frontières entre le monde humain et animal, fondées sur des critères comme la maîtrise du langage, la capacité à rire ou la responsabilité légale, ont profondément évolué et été remises en cause entre le XIIe et le XVe siècle. This is the first volume that explores the changing relationships between humans and animals, both real and fantastic, in medieval France, from a completely interdisciplinary perspective. The authors examine the way the human-animal rapport was imagined, defined and remodeled in thought, culture and artistic production. The distinction between human and animal, fundamental in the Bible and in Ancient philosophy, was challenged throughout the course of the 12th century. This phenomenon can be traced in changes in the terminology used to designate animals, in their representations in the arts and literature, and in the reworking of fundamental texts such as the Physiologus and the bestiaries. The borders between the human and the animal world, based on criteria such as linguistic ability, the capacity to laugh and even legal responsibility, evolved and were fundamentally reconsidered between the 12th and the 15th century. Irène Fabry-Tehranchi est enseignante en langue et littérature française et médiévale à l’université de Reading. Elle est l’auteur de Texte et images des manuscrits du Merlin et de la Suite Vulgate (XIIIe-XVe s.) (Brepols, 2014). Anna Russakoff est enseignante et co-directrice du département d’Histoire de l’Art à The American University, Paris. Elle est co-éditrice et contributrice de l’ouvrage Jean Pucelle: Innovation and Collaboration in Manuscript Painting (Brepols, 2013).


Lettering the Self in Medieval and Early Modern France

Lettering the Self in Medieval and Early Modern France

Author: Katherine Kong

Publisher: Boydell & Brewer

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 287

ISBN-13: 1843842319

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Each chapter focuses on a particular epistolary exchange in its intellectual and cultural context, from Baudri of Bourgueil and Constance of Angers, through Heloise and Abelard, Christine de Pizan's participation in the querelle du Roman de la rose, Marguerite de Navarre and Guillaume Briconnet, to Michel de Montaigne and Etienne de la Boetie, emphasizing the importance of letter writing in pre-modern French culture and tracing a selective yet significant history of the letter, contributing to our understanding of the development of the epistolary genre, and the pre-modern self --Book Jacket.


Shaping Courtliness in Medieval France

Shaping Courtliness in Medieval France

Author: Laurie Shepard

Publisher: DS Brewer

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 314

ISBN-13: 1843843358

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The question of what medieval "courtliness" was, both as a literary influence and as a historical "reality", is debated in this volume. The concept of courtliness forms the theme of this collection of essays. Focused on works written in the Francophone world between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, they examine courtliness as both an historical privilege and aliterary ideal, and as a concept that operated on and was informed by complex social and economic realities. Several essays reveal how courtliness is subject to satire or is the subject of exhortation in works intended for noblemen and women, not to mention ambitious bourgeois. Others, more strictly literary in their focus, explore the witty, thoughtful and innovative responses of writers engaged in the conscious process of elevating the new vernacular culture through the articulation of its complexities and contradictions. The volume as a whole, uniting philosophical, theoretical, philological, and cultural approaches, demonstrates that medieval "courtliness" is an ideal that fascinates us to this day. It is thus a fitting tribute to the scholarship of Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, in its exploration of the prrofound and wide-ranging ideas that define her contribution to the field. DANIEL E O'SULLIVAN is Associate Professor of French at the University of Mississippi; LAURIE SHEPHARD is Associate Professor of Italian at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. Contributors: Peter Haidu, Donald Maddox, Michel-André Bossy, Kristin Burr, Joan Tasker Grimbert, David Hult, Virgine Greene, Logan Whalen, Evelyn Birge Vitz, Elizabeth W. Poe, Daniel E. O'Sullivan, William Schenck, Nadia Margolis, Laine Doggett, E. Jane Burns, Nancy FreemanRegalado, Laurie Shephard, Sarah White


Rewriting Medieval French Literature

Rewriting Medieval French Literature

Author: Leah Tether

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2021-07-05

Total Pages: 383

ISBN-13: 3110639033

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Jane H. M. Taylor is one of the world's foremost scholars of rewriting or réécriture. Her focus has been on literature in medieval and Renaissance France, but rewriting, including continuation, translation, and adaptation, lies at the heart of literary traditions in all vernaculars. This book explores both the interdisciplinarity of rewriting and Taylor's remarkable contribution to its study. The rewriting and reinterpretation of narratives across chronological, social and/or linguistic boundaries represents not only a crucial feature of text transmission, but also a locus of cultural exchange. Taylor has shown that the adaptation of material to conform to the expectations, values, or literary tastes of a different audience can reveal important information regarding the acculturation and reception of medieval texts. In recent years, numerous scholars across disciplines have thus turned to this field of enquiry. This collection of studies dedicated to the rewriting of medieval French literature from the twelfth to the twenty-first centuries by Taylor’s friends, colleagues, and former students offers not only a fitting tribute to Taylor’s career, but also a timely consolidation of the very latest research in the field, which will be vital for all scholars of medieval rewriting. With contributions from Jessica Taylor, Keith Busby, Leah Tether, Logan E. Whalen, Mireille Séguy, Christine Ferlampin-Acher, Ad Putter, Anne Salamon, Patrick Moran, Nathalie Koble, Bart Besamusca, Frank Brandsma, Richard Trachsler, Carol J. Chase, Maria Colombo Timelli, Laura Chuhan Campbell, Joan Tasker-Grimbert, Jean-Claude Mühlethaler, Michelle Szkilnik, Thomas Hinton, Elizabeth Archibald.