Medieval French Occasional Verse: Another Fair Field Needing Folk

Abstract

A large, very significant section of medieval French literature consists of occasional verse, a terrain which, perhaps because of its size and its diverse nature, has been much neglected in recent times. This paper briefly surveys the work done on it in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and then suggests a number of topics for study. These include authors’ identities; their motives for writing; the views expressed; the occasions which gave rise to the compositions and the authors’ connections, if any, with those occasions; the metrical forms; scribal presentations; whether the poems were sung or recited; their survival and transmission; and their reception then and their value to us now.