French-Speaking Courts and Literary Dominance in Europe

Abstract

This chapter examines the rise of court literature in French, starting approximately in the middle of the twelfth century. It traces the conditions which gave rise to Francophone literature and its dissemination by translation, adaptation, and influence in other language areas in the course of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. French literature in general is foundational and is at the heart of the development of romance and lyric poetry (for example) across Europe. Chronologically and by virtue of its extensive corpus, courtly literature in French provided models, direct and indirect, for authors outside of medieval Francophonia. Much early French literature was written in England for the conquerors and their descendants, suppressing, albeit not entirely, literature in English. Attention is paid in varying degrees to manifestations of French influence in Middle High German, Middle Dutch, Old Norse, and Middle English. It is important to stress the difference between adaptations of known French models and works composed independently but on models provided in French. The transmission of French-language literature is dependent on the movement of books and individuals in a multitude of social and cultural contexts. When French genres are adapted into other languages, they are usually assimilated to contexts familiar to the new audiences and readerships. Given the linguistic situation in post-Conquest Britain, the French influence on Middle English was late (from the end, rather than beginning, of the thirteenth century. Both in adaptations of French romance and the influence of poets such as Machaut and Deschamps on the likes of Chaucer, French court literature remained dominant through most of the Middle Ages.