Old French Literature

Il testo del Devisement dou monde (o Milione, secondo la tradizione italiana) trasmesso dal codice parigino fr. 1116 rappresenta la forma linguisticamente più vicina alla superficie discorsiva originale dell’opera poliana. Dopo l’edizione del 2010 Mario Eusebi ne ha rivisto la lezione: il frutto di tale revisione (già disponibile al lettore nell’edizione digitale di Dei viaggi di Messer Marco Polo di Giovanni Battista Ramusio, in questa collana, vol. 5) torna alla tradizionale forma-libro, accompagnato dal glossario integrale e dagli indici dei nomi e dei toponimi, curati da Eugenio Burgio.

After the 2010 edition (Il manoscritto della Bibliothèque Nationale de France fr. 1116, Rome-Padua: Editrice Antenore), Mario Eusebi reviewed the text of the Franco-Venetian redaction (F) of the Devisement dou monde (in collaboration with Eugenio Burgio and Samuela Simion). The result of this revision has long been available to the reader in the digital edition of Giovanni Battista Ramusio’s Dei viaggi di Messer Marco Polo (Simion, Burgio 2015): here the text goes back to the traditional book-form; the second volume, already promised in the subtitle of the 2010 edition, is dedicated to the full glossary and indexes (names and toponyms), edited by Eugenio Burgio (with a linguistic note by Mario Eusebi).

Rather than being a somewhat inept literary work, as it is sometimes thought to be, 'La Chanson de Willame' is rather a cohesive expression of the same strong orally-based epic tradition that produced 'La Chanson de Roland' and other chansons de geste. Its mixture of the sublime and the obscene is suggestive of a relation to a lively popular tradition. Its apparent narrative anomalies disappear when the poem is considered in that light.

The writing, reading and reception of a crusade-story in medieval Flanders, Norway, and Iceland.

This book relates a story about the writing, reading, and reception of one text in three different cultural and political contexts across Europe. The focus is on the story of the Christian knight Elye and his Saracen princess Rosamunde, which was translated into Old Norse in the thirteenth century. This is a study of three of the manuscripts in which the work is preserved: one Old French manuscript from Flanders (BnF, fr. 25516, c. 1280) and two Old Norse manuscripts, one from Norway (DG 4–7 fol., c. 1270) and one from Iceland (Holm Perg 6 4 to, c. 1400). These manuscripts represent three different rhetorical and communicative situations and show how the writing and reading of the same text was conditioned by the respective cultural and political environment. The book innovatively conveys Old Norse culture as an active respondent, participant, and thus modulator of European literary tendencies. Tracing the translation, transmission, and transformation of the text throughout Europe redefines aspects of the Latin-vernacular nexus in the Middle Ages, and thus presents a new and valuable voice in the discussion of medieval European literary and cultural systems.

In this paper I have provided, first, a brief overview of typical uses of varieties of monologue in different genres of French medieval literature. My corpus contains two chansons de geste, five verse romances, one prose romance, and one chantefable, all of them written in Old French and in the 12th-13th centuries. In exploring the monologues in these works I have paid particular attention to a particular aspect of monologues’ structure: the micro-structures which attach the monologue to the textual whole – that is, to the verbs of speaking (verba dicendi), their lexical semantics and syntactic escort.
Then I have proceeded to an analysis of the forms of monologue in Shota Rustaveli’s The Man in the Panther’s Skin, in order to address the following issues: 1) Is Rustaveli’s work more elaborate in representing thoughts and speech, could it represent a later phase of literary evolution, compared to the French works? 2) Is it just different? 3) Does the pattern within which the monologue occurs here tell us something about the genre of this work?

Intervenendo nel celebre débat trobadorico sulla natura d’amore, con la canzone D’amors, qui m’a tolu a moi, Chrétien de Troyes immette nel circolo della polemica tristaniana due elementi fondamentali e tra loro connessi: la “merci” e la “bone volentez”. Variamente declinata, la questione delle reciproche implicazioni tra “mercé” e “buona voglia” costituisce uno dei nodi dell’ascendente probabilmente esercitato da Chrétien sulla poesia italiana antica, con rilievo particolare in Gunizzelli. Su questa base l’A. ipotizza che la ripresa in sede lirica del tema da parte di Dante possa costituire la traccia significativa di una relazione diretta con il testo di Chrétien, preludio necessario alla soluzione inedita del rapporto tra “buona voglia” e “mercé” successivamente stabilita da Dante stesso nell’orizzonte nuovo della Commedia.

Several medieval texts tell the story of an imaginary voyage of Charlemagne to Jerusalem and Constantinople. Among them, the Latin Descriptio qualiter... (11th-12th century) contains several odd features, analyzed in the present paper: two curious letters, one of them containing a sequence of gobbledygook phrases. The present paper revisits the Descriptio qualiter...’s already known sources of inspiration, the Translatio Sanguinis Domini from the Benedictine abbey of Reichenau and an account by a certain monk Benedict from the monastery saint Andrew on Mount Soracte (both of them dating back to the 10th century). The analysis then explores the transliteration of Greek texts in the various manuscript variants of the Descriptio qualiter..., the use of voces magicae and rudiments of spoken Greek, as well as the possible misreading of a real 9th century Byzantine imperial letter on papyrus kept in the monastery of saint-Denis.

Tra i monumenti letterari che attestano la fase più antica del fortuna-to mito medievale di Tristano e Isotta si colloca il breve testo anti-co-francese in octosyllabes della Folie Tristan, tramandato in due diverse redazioni risalenti al xii secolo: una più corta, detta di Berna (che qui si presenta), l'altra più lunga, detta di Oxford. Travestito da folle, Tristano torna alla corte di re Marco per rivedere l'amata Isotta. Da lei tenta di farsi riconoscere, rievocando con un discorso apparen-temente insensato gli episodi salienti della loro storia. La regina-dapprima diffidente-finirà per cedere, e dopo l'agnizione finale gli amanti riusciranno a ricongiungersi per un'ultima breve stagione. Ennesima maschera tristaniana, la simulazione della follia permette la messa in atto di un geniale dispositivo della "ricordanza", che restitui-sce nella miniatura di un breve poemetto le vicende più note degli amanti di Cornovaglia. Chiara Concina insegna Filologia romanza all'Università di Verona. Si occupa principalmente di lirica antico-francese, di scritture odeporiche e della ricezione francese, italiana e catalana di Boezio in età medievale.

Edition and discussion of a short fragment of an Anglo-Norman translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia. It is one of a series of such translations, evidence for Geoffrey's popularity and the liveliness of the vernacular literary tradition in 12th-century England.

To read Christine de Pizan's Livre du Duc des vrais amans (c. 1403-1405) as a literary demystification of the erotic ideology promulgated by courtly literature is hardly controversial. Kevin Brownlee has demonstrated how the Duc's formal, narrative, and discursive characteristics put it in conversation and confrontation with, on the one hand, the classic fourteenth-century dit amoureux as exemplified by the works of Guillaume de Machaut and Jean Froissart, and on the other hand the thirteenth-century Roman de la Rose, which casts a long shadow over Christine's sustained "revisionary endeavor" to challenge love literature's "discursive and generic models by simultaneously modifying and utilizing them" (Brownlee 172). 1 As Roberta Krueger argues, the Duc-the pseudo-autobiographical account of a young male aristocrat's initiation into the practice of fine amour, his affair with the unnamed lady who grants him her love, and the social pressures that eventually cause their relationship to peter out-identifies, performs, and "deconstructs the seductive strategies" through which courtly texts recruit complicit (female) readers, revealing the erotological tradition's "masculinist bias" and thus transforming a kind of "fiction . . . potentially deleterious to women readers into a fiction whose example might be instructive for them" (218). 2 Critical consensus justifiably locates an interpretive key to this project in the famous epistolary condemnation of adulterous love addressed in the Duc to the protagonist's lady by her former governess, Sebille de Monthault, Dame de la Tour. Christine underscores the moral authority of Sebille's admonnestement, which clearly represents her own (if perhaps not her only) views on fine amour, in at least three ways: stylistically, by differentiating its didactic clerical prose from the registers of narrative verse, amorous lyric and courtly prose that make up the rest of the polyphonic Duc; diegetically, by writing an end to the duke's love affair that largely bears out the gloomy prophecies

The manuscript BnF fr. 1116 (F) is the best surviving witness of the Devisement dou monde both for the quality of its reading and because it offers the closest version to the original form of the text. The book was written by Marco Polo, who had travelled for 24 years in Asia in the last quarter of the thirteenth century, and Rustichello da Pisa, an Arthurian romance writer, while both were prisoners in Genoa in 1298. The language in which the work was first written – an Old French heavily sprinkled with morphological as well as lexical Italianisms – is considered as a representative example of «Franco-Italian». The great heterogeneity of the texts usually included within this category, however, might provide an incorrect impression as regards both the original linguistic form of the Devisement and the audience to whom it was originally addressed. The language of the ms. BnF fr. 1116 does not display strong similarities to the hybrid language used in Northern Italy for chivalric literature, which is traditionally called «Franco-Italian» or «Franco-Venetan». Some linguistic correspondences enable us to connect the ms. BnF fr. 1116  with the group of Old French manuscripts copied by Pisan scribes while incarcerated in Genoa prison, following the battle of Meloria (1284). The fragment of the Devisement recently discovered by C. Concina appears to be very similar to F. Both graphic and phonetic evidences suggest that this witness, too, has to be localised to Tuscany.

Early in Malory’s Morte d'Arthur, King Arthur makes his knights swear an oath to abide by the standards he expects of them.  This paper is a brief examination of Malory’s concept of chivalry and how different knights, including the king, himself, either succeeded or failed to meet the standards of that oath.  And the consequences of failing to adhere to it.  In the process I'll also looks at the way Malory modified his sources to develop this theme, particularly with respect to Lancelot, who Malory sought to present as the best of Arthur’s knights.
The paper was originally written in 1979 for a Middle English course .  When I wrote it, I had no knowledge of the French sources Malory used, beyond references in the Middle English text books cited.  Translations of many of the French works have only become available in the last couple of decades.  For completeness, I have added additional comments to my footnotes to identify Malory's Old French sources, where these have been identified.

The paper presents a semantic study of the noun ire in the Roman de Troie by Benoît de Sainte-Maure. Ire, in fact, has been chosen as the central observation point of the emotional paradigm of the text, with particular reference to the two emotions of “anger” and “grief”. The analysis of ire is based upon the complete inventory of its occurrences, including information concerning the situational contexts, the characters affected by these emotions, the physiological manifestations of the studied emotions and their ensuing reactions, and also the paradigmatic and syntagmatic relations of the lexeme. The exegesis of single contexts also takes into account the lexical comparison with the Latin sources of the text and with the successive “translation” by Guido delle Colonne. This latter work, in some cases, offers a true Latin gloss of the noun ire, providing the modern interpreter with a useful crosscheck of its semantic connotation.

The subject of this article is the analysis of Secondes litanies de la Vierge (1991) by Jacques Roubaud, which unveils three types of relations in which these poems may be perceived: between the form of liturgical litany and the forme fixée of chant royal, between the rules of litany's creation and rules of potential literature, and between the liturgical litany and the poetic litanies written in the twentieth century. The main aim of the article is to represent the work of Jacques Roubaud as a sophisticated public response to the work of one of Grand Rhétoriquers, Jean Meschinot (1420-1491), author of Litanies de la Vierge. The contemporary poet reuses the content of old chants royaux as well the rules of the composition provided by Meschinot, and creates the work which fits into the range of contemporary poems, intended as the litany, but does not follow directly the path sketched by poets like Bonnefoy, Stéfan, and Claudel.

Il comico, il sacro, l'osceno e altri nodi della letteratura medievale Questo libro tratta di nodi di cui è difficile sottacere l'importanza. Il riso, una capacità propria ed esclusiva della specie umana; il riso che, associato a un'altra facoltà tipicamente umana, il linguaggio articolato, transita nel comico, nell'insieme di procedimenti atti a suscitarlo. L'importanza della sessualità per definire i lineamenti di una cultura-con gli annessi comportamenti prescritti o proscritti, ammessi o interdetti, in pubblico e in privato, fra intimi o fra estranei-motiva il territorio, cangiante e di estensione variabile, dell'osceno, nelle cui molteplici manifestazioni è riconoscibile un'aria di famiglia. Il sacro, colto nei testi della letteratura medievale e sotto la forma della religione, insieme istituzione, linguaggio, ideologia e rito. Ma il riso, al pari dell'osceno, può fare capolino fra i comportamenti e le rappresentazioni proscritte e interdette dal territorio sacro, eppure in qualche modo coinvolto, come la sfera sessuale del pari, in quanto latore di una potenza parallela. Sono proprio le intersezioni inattese, gli attraversamenti pericolosi, fra questi tre complessi, il comico, il sacro, l'osceno, che specialmente percorrono questo libro, perché è proprio nelle zone di passaggio, di confine, di incrocio, che si verificano quei fenomeni in grado di riconfigurare le norme, i comportamenti, le aspettative, i pregiudizi del mondo ordinario, illuminando con nuove luci e prospettive quanto una cultura dà per scontato. E dove la mente moderna indaga accorda disunisce, la civiltà medievale ci impone di rimescolare di nuovo ciò che riteniamo distinto una volta per tutte.

In Part 3 of my Prosopographic analysis of the poems of Chrétien’s Arthurian poems, I take a closer look at the characters Chrétien made more regular use of.  Here, too, we find that Chrétien was frequently unfamiliar with the tradition behind the name, leading him to completely reinvent the character.  Among these we also find the names of a number of characters who were apparently invented by Chrétien.  Names like Sagremor, Dodinel and Girflet, who would claim their own places in later tradition.  And in the case of the best known names, like Lancelot, Perceval and Kay, we touch upon some interesting insights into these well-known heroes, and in one case glimpse a lost tale that Chrétien chose to hold onto, albeit in the most oblique of references.

de Valenciennes et le problème du genre littéraire * La Bible de Herman de Valenciennes est la plus ancienne et diffusée parmi les réécritures en vers de l'histoire sainte en ancien français. Certaines contributions récentes ont proposé de la définir comme le produit d'une hybridation de genres littéraires, c'est-à-dire l'adaptation à des contenus religieux des marques formelles typiques de la chanson de geste. Notre contribution vise à discuter la plausibilité historique de cette reconstruction en relation soit à sa cohérence avec le texte d'Herman soit à ses implications les plus larges. À travers le cas de la Bible nous montrerons les limites du concept de genre littéraire en tant que outil heuristique dans un domaine, celui de la narrative religieuse, très relevant du point de vue historique et typologique.

In the Roman de la Rose, one of the masterpieces of medieval French literature, begun by Guillaume de Lorris around 1230 and completed by Jean de Meun between 1270 and 1280, the allegory of Fortune has a prominent place, especially in the second part of the work, where more than two thousand verses are devoted to her personification. Described by both authors as a feminine supernatural entity turning the wheel of fate whimsically and unpredictably, the figure of Fortune reflects literary and iconographic topoi from the classical tradition, reinterpreted in terms of the ethical demands of Christian culture. Fortune’s portrayal in Boethius’ Consolatio Philosophiae fixes most of the figurative and figural characters that survive to the present day. Jean de Meun’s depiction of Fortune shows the process of resemantization of didactic models as courtly symbols: in this light, the path of the Lover to the Rose ceases to be a mystical experience, an itinerarium mentis in Deum, to become an itinerarium amantis in deam. The hero undertakes a quest in the name of the God of Love who asks his faithful servant to choose between the wise way of Reason and the hazardous way of the heart (la voie de Fortune).

"The word paternoster has been applied in a variety of senses. In the Middle Ages paternoster became a synonym for lovemaking. An early instance of this usage appears in the anonymous medieval Latin Prisciano regula. Later it occurs in Rutebeuf's Old French De frere Denise and the Middle English Secunda Pastorum. Evidence that the medieval usage perhaps continued into the modern period is found in Thackeray's Vanity Fair and Hugo's Notre-Dame.

The erotic paternoster may have originated in a playful juxtaposition of a holy prayer and an unholy deed, in an awareness that people saying the paternoster often had their minds on their lovers, or in the proximity of the paternoster to the kiss of peace in the liturgy."

→ https://www.neerlandistiek.nl/2020/03/hoe-een-ridderroman-eindigt-in-een-sprookje/ ] Eline van Onzenoort Hoe een ridderroman eindigt in een sprookje © 2020 by ARV Tegelaar , NL [ v. 1. 0 De conclusie hierin , dat het « waarschijnlijker [is] dat de roman gebaseerd is op het sprookje [ The shephard and the Three Giants ] » // zou ik niet willen onderschrijven .

This article embarks upon aviantropistic transformation in the Old French poem: Folie Tristan (twelfth century), analysed against the background of two texts belonging to different epochs or cultures: an anonymous saga from the so-called historical cycle of Irish mythology, telling the story of the warrior Suibhne, who due to his sin and the resultant curse cast by St. Ronan was condemned to a “bird’s” existence in tree tops, and the tale of the mythical Picus, recounted by Ovid and Virgil, in which the son of Saturn and king of Latium was changed by jealous Circe into a woodpecker. Although in Old French texts the miracle factor was conspicuously reduced and subjected to essential rationalisation (in the Christian approach dominating from the Patristic era the possibility of a transformation of man into an animal is decidedly rejected and relegated to the domain of diabolical illusions) the conducted analysis shows fascinating similarities - evidence of the survival of a mythical substrate below the stratum of courtly narration. In this way, the motif of transformation into a bird gains a different dimension: unlike the mediaeval lais, marked with elfin miraculousness, it is not a poetic ornament but a trace of ominous, taboo-based punishment forcing to pose questions about the nature and limitations of humanity./
Artykuł podejmuje kwestię awiantropicznej przemiany w średniowiecznej starofrancuskiej Powieści o Tristanie (XII w.), analizując tę ostatnią na tle dwóch tekstów, przynależących do odrębnych epok bądź kultur: anonimowej sagi należącej do tzw. cyklu historycznego mitologii irlandzkiej, opowiadającej historię wojownika irlandzkiego Subihne, który za sprawą swego grzechu i wynikłej stąd klątwy świętego Ronana został skazany na „ptasią” egzystencję w koronach drzew, oraz opisywanej przez Owidiusza i Wergiliusza historii mitycznego Pikusa, syna Saturna i króla Lacjum, zamienionego przez zazdrosną Kirke w dzięcioła. Choć w starofrancuskich utworach cudowność została mocno zredukowana i poddana istotnej racjonalizacji (w optyce chrześcijańskiej, dominującej od czasów patrystycznych, możliwość przemiany człowieka w zwierzę jest zdecydowanie odrzucana i relegowana do domeny diabelskich iluzji), to jednak przeprowadzona analiza ukazuje frapujące podobieństwa, świadczące o przetrwaniu mitycznego substratu pod warstwą dwornej narracji. Tym samym wątek ptasiej przemiany uzyskuje tutaj inny wymiar: odmiennie niż w średniowiecznych lais, naznaczonych baśniową cudownością, nie jest to poetycki ornament, lecz ślad mrocznej, tabuicznej kary, zmuszający do stawiania pytań o naturę i granice człowieczeństwa.

Various scholars have supposed that Marco Polo dictated his travel memories to Rustichello da Pisa on the basis of the details supplied in the Devisement dou monde’s prologue. According to another hypothesis, Rustichello would have reworked notes taken by Marco during his stay in Asia. The economic historian Franco Borlandi assumes the existence of a primitive version of Polo’s report, structured as a trade manual. He remarks that Oriental names and words contained in the Devisement are not transcribed according to the Old French orthographic system, but according to the Italian one. In Borlandi’s opinion, this evidence would demonstrate that Rustichello used an exemplar written in a medieval Italian vernacular for his translation. However, the analysis of Chinese toponyms proves that Marco contributed orally to the composition of the text. Oriental words are written in an orthographic system that reflects Tuscan pronunciation, rather than Venetian. Rustichello adapted to his phonologic system words which he had heard pronounced by Marco.

This paper performs a critical examination of the relationship between gender and space in the thirteenth-century Old French Lancelot-Grail Cycle. I argue that the sites in which genders and sexualities are established within the diegesis contribute to defining masculinity and femininity. In the context of the Lancelot-Grail, therefore, mapping space is also a question of mapping gender.
Gender is theorised as a social construct, culturally inscribed through a series of reiterative, citational practices. Social space as it is discussed within this paper is predicated on Lefebvrian and Foucauldian formulations of medieval space, involving an element of displacement in order to root the socially constructed subject within what is deemed to be his or her proper place. The placement and subsequent displacement of subjects involves a constant attempt to reinforce the boundaries that construct the gendered subject. I claim, however, that these frequent displacements produce opportunities for characters to transgress from established gender norms.

Robert de Reims, also known as “La Chievre de Rains,” was among the earliest trouvères—poet-composers who were contemporaries of the troubadours but who wrote in the dialects of northern France. This critical edition provides new translations into English and modern French of all the songs and motets ascribed to him, along with the original texts, the extant music, and a substantive introduction.
Active sometime between 1190 and 1220, Robert was an influential figure in the literary circles of Arras. Thirteen compositions set to music are here attributed to him, including nine chansons and four polyphonic motets that were broadly disseminated in the thirteenth century and beyond. Robert’s work is exceptional on a number of fronts. He lavished particular care on the phonic harmony of his words. Acoustic luxuriance and expertise in rhyming, grounded in the play of echoes and variation (often extending into the music), constitute the hallmark of his poetry. Moreover, he is the earliest trouvère known to have composed a parodic sotte chanson contre Amours (silly song against Love).
Located clearly at the nexus of monophonic song and polyphony, Robert’s corpus also poses the intriguing question of trouvère participation in the development of the polyphonic repertory. The case of Robert de Reims jostles and tempers the standard history of the chanson and motet.
Accessible and instructive, this trilingual critical edition of his complete works makes the oeuvre of this innovative and consequential trouvère available in one volume for the first time.

In Part 2 of my Prosopographic analysis of the poems of Chrétien’s Arthurian poems, I take a closer look at the few characters who feature only in the three stories Chrétien tells in his Erec and Enide poem.  What these show is that, at the time he wrote this first poem, Chrétien was quite unfamiliar with the tradition he was drawing upon.  And this led his to cast some characters, such as Yder, Son of Nut, into roles at odds with the Welsh tradition behind their names.

Again, a heavily truncated version of this paper was presented at the Fourth Annual Symposium on Medieval and Renaissance Studies in St Louis, Missouri, USA in June 2016.

The adaptation of novel techniques and standards in computational lexicography is taking place at an accelerating pace, as manifested by
recent extensions beyond the traditional XML-based paradigm of electronic publication. One important area of activity in this regard is
the transformation of lexicographic resources into (Linguistic) Linked Open Data ([L]LOD), and the application of the OntoLex-Lemon
vocabulary to electronic editions of dictionaries. At the moment, however, these activities focus on machine-readable dictionaries,
natural language processing and modern languages and found only limited resonance in philology in general and in historical language
stages in particular. This paper presents an endeavor to transform the resources of a comprehensive dictionary of Old French into LOD
using OntoLex-Lemon and it sketches the difficulties of modeling particular aspects that are due to the medieval stage of the language.

The present thesis constitutes an investigation into dream narratives and initiation processes in Medieval and Renaissance romances. Specifically, it is a comparative study of three literary works: the thirteenth-century Byzantine Τale of Livistros and Rodamne, the thirteenth-century French Roman de la Rose, and the fifteenth-century Italian book Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, focusing on the examination of a particular type of dream narratives, in which the dreamer undergoes a visionary journey, during which he is gradually initiated to the mysteries of love in order to pursue and obtain his object of desire. The dream situation, the use of allegory and the complexity of these texts in regards to language, narrative structure and imagery point to a multiplicity of meaning. In order to explore these multiple layers of meaning, I am pursuing an interdisciplinary method applying anthropological and psychoanalytical theories in conjunction with literary analysis, while taking into account the works’ historical and socio-cultural context as well as the degree and the significance of their inter-textual associations.
The novel aspects of the thesis are (a) the ascertainment that dream narratives in these works are closely interlinked with the protagonists’ initiations leading to the recognition of a particular type of dream narrative, to which I refer to as dream of initiation, (b) the combined analysis of the aforementioned three works, which has not been attempted before, and (c) the application of the anthropological theory of rites of passage as the theoretical basis for the analysis.
The thesis will be divided into three thematic chapters, each exploring different aspects of the initiation processes, specifically: the dream situation, space, characters, and rituals. These themes, which interconnect and complete each other, will be explored on the main axis of erotic desire and of initiation as a processual movement towards a goal. An in-depth analysis of the different constituent elements of the narratives connected through this main axis and discussed based on certain constants, such as narrative function, language, literary tradition, and historical context, will aspire towards an understanding of the initiation processes therein and of what constitutes the dream of initiation.

The numerous surviving texts of prophecies in Old French of the end of the world are based mainly on St John's Apocalypse. Most are very literal translations of the Latin original (a common mode of Biblical translation) but, unusually, many are unglossed and there is no attempt to explore historical or eschatological interpretations. But this unexpected approach to the text can be seen as a deliberate strategy on the part of the translators.

This essay examines, in a broad and reasoned review of the volume, problems concerning beginnings and rewrites within the Latin and Old French texts of the legend of St. Patrick's Purgatory. The analysis of positive and negative content is discussed with the author, which is followed by a brief reply to the essay that includes many of signaled annotations.

Ce texte nous invite à penser en quoi le XIIème siècle, celui de l’amour courtois est aussi celui des « épouses du christ ». Moments décisifs d’un nouveau regard sur le mariage, les corps, l’amour et le sacré. La chanson de St Alexis est exemplaire de ce changement de paradigme narratif où la vie de l’épouse dans l’épreuve de l’amour et du mariage terrestre ne s’énonce plus dans la langue de l’allégorie universelle mais à partir de l’expérience, du particulier et de la biographie personnelle dans une métamorphose de la langue, inédite façon de commencer à dire le singulier.
This text is an invitation to consider the twelfth century, now so well known as the century of courtly love, is also the century of the “brides of Christ”, witnessing decisive developments with regard to marriage, the body, love and the sacred. The Chanson de St Alexis is exemplary of a shift in narrative paradigm in which the life of the bride is no longer articulated in a language of universal allegory, but rather grounded in the experience of earthly love and marriage, of the particular and of personal biography, in a metamorphosis of language and a new way of speaking the singular.

The collection of motets in manuscript Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds fr. 12615, known as the “Chansonnier de Noailles,” brings together ninety-one thirteenth-century motets in two to four parts, whose upper voices are all sung to vernacular texts. It is one of six diverse collections contained in the manuscript; it shares space with three different compilations of monophonic songs, a collection of songs and dits, various nonlyric texts, and several later additions, all gathered in a codex closely tied to the former northern province of Artois and in particular to the city of Arras. The motet collection is notable in several respects: with its ninety-one pieces it is the fourth-largest repository of thirteenth-century motets and the third-largest of motets in French; it is one of only two sizable sets of polyphonic motets preserved in provincial songbooks rather than Parisian collections, a fact that broadly affects the style of several groups of its motets; finally, it transmits an unusually high number of unica, due to the anthology’s inclusion in an Artesian chansonnier. Although the Chansonnier de Noailles has sparked the interest of bibliophiles and scholars since the first half of the eighteenth century, its faulty polyphonic notation has made editing the motets difficult; past editions have thus been incomplete and relied heavily upon concordant readings. This volume presents the music and texts (with translations into English) of the motets from the Chansonnier de Noailles, for the first time published in a single, coordinated, comprehensive critical edition.

This article presents a textbook case for the examination of generic interplay in the thirteenth century, investigating four works that offer transgeneric reworkings relating polyphony to trouvère song. These works are found as anonymous motets and clausulae in polyphonic gatherings, but their upper voices are also copied as multi-strophic songs in songbooks, where they are attributed to the trouvère Robert de Reims. This case therefore touches on the issues of generic borders and mixing, on trouvère involvement in this generic interplay, and on the relationships between attribution and authorship in the Middle Ages. The investigation has important outcomes for the reconstruction of the genetic map of the motet, revealing works playing havoc with the vectors of transmission customarily established in the interplay of motet, chanson and clausula, and revealing early trouvère involvement in the repertoire as an essential key to the comprehension of cross-over activity between song and polyphony.

The action of the Old French epic poem 'Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne' falls into two main parts, a Jerusalem episode and a Constantinople episode. Accordingly, some scholars have viewed the poem as a compilation of two separate tales. In reaction to this view, others have defended the poem's unity on subtle literary grounds. More fruitful than either of these approaches is a view of the poem as a simple tale whose structure is like the bedrock form of the European folktale. When one reads the poem within the broad context of folk literature -- specifically, with reference to Vladimir Propp's comparative morphology of the folktale -- the poem's relationship of parts can be seen to be lucid and appropriate.

From a structural as well as a thematic perspective, it is Charlemagne, not Roland, who occupies the central place in the poem that has been given Roland's name. Moreover, apparent anomalies in the representation of Charlemagne tend to dissipate when this poem is read with reference to the hieratic Byzantine concept of the ideal ruler.

Come nasce e cresce un eroe? Quali sono gli esordi della sua carriera? Spinti dall’appetito narrativo del pubblico feudale-cortese, i trovieri delle chansons de geste cercarono di rispondere a queste domande componendo poemi sulle primissime imprese degli eroi più popolari del Medioevo francese. Ma la nascita e la gioventù dell’eroe divennero presto temi pressoché obbligatori in tutte le chansons che raccontavano la biografia degli antichi cavalieri di Carlo Magno: un’infanzia travagliata, spesso più fiabesca che epica, diventa segno e sinonimo di eroismo.
Questi racconti sull’iniziazione dell’eroe sono noti al pubblico medievale e ai filologi moderni come enfances. L’eroe fanciullo o alle prime armi si presenta in varie forme nell’epica francese medievale: come tema generico, come motivo episodico, come protagonista di testi interamente dedicati a lui. I fini dell’eroe imberbe sono principalmente tre – l’investitura cavalleresca, la conquista di un feudo e quella di una donna – e attorno a lui compare una costellazione di altre figure ricorrenti: i genitori, la matrigna, il re al cui servizio il giovane si pone, le principesse che lo aiutano nelle sue imprese, bestie feroci, briganti, guerrieri infedeli, usurpatori che lo costringono all’esilio.
Il presente studio definisce la poetica del genere delle enfances e le caratteristiche salienti dei poemi che ce le tramandano, illustrando l’evoluzione della tecnica narrativa medievale attraverso una tradizione letteraria che si sviluppa in Francia dall’XI al XIV secolo.