Multilingualism and Mother Tongue in Medieval French, Occitan, and Catalan Narratives (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Multilingualism and Mother Tongue in Medieval French, Occitan, and Catalan Narratives Samuel N. Rosenberg Catherine E. Léglu . Multilingualism and Mother Tongue in Medieval French, Occitan, and Catalan Narratives. Penn State Romance Studies. University Park, Pennsylvania: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010. x + 237 pp. ISBN 978-0-271-03673-1. $35 In the introduction, some dozen pages—of rather detailed linguistic and literary developments in the regions where Occitan, Catalan, French, and, occasionally, Italian were spoken—slowly unwind into Professor Léglu's statement of her intention, to "examine the literary use of competing Romance vernaculars in the later Middle Ages" (13). (The competition, of course, sometimes involved Latin as well.) This she will "explor[e] in an awareness of cultural differences as well as sociopolitical pressures" (13). The book is nicely balanced, with each of its three parts comprising three chapters. The first two chapters of Part I, "Myths of Multilingualism," treat two works that are said to exemplify different aspects of hybridity: the fairly well-known 12th-century chanson de geste, Girart de Roussillon, the several surviving redactions of which show a striking range of dialectal usages; and the relatively ignored early 14th-century Libre de Guilhem de la Barra of Arnaut Vidal de Castelnaudary, the unique manuscript of which reveals, for Léglu, a hybridity centered not in its obviously Occitan language but in its apparently incoherent narrative, which will turn out not to be incoherent, after all (36). In both instances, there is much to be said for, and about, the writer's patient synopses and her power of narrative explication; questions of language, however, are treated with unexpected sketchiness. Chapter 3 takes up the disputed role of maternal agency in language acquisition, as treated in texts such as the Abreujamens de las estorias (an Occitan translation of Paolino Veneto's Chronologia magna [c. 1270-1344]), before venturing into tensions between Toulouse and papal Avignon and then into the struggle between Toulousan Occitan and the growing presence of French in the region. Here Léglu examines the emergence and significance [End Page 114] of the Consistori . . . del gay saber in Toulouse and, in particular, its ars poetria, the so-called Leys d'Amors (1323-56), attributed to Guilhem Molinier, which she discusses in considerable detail, concluding that the text, in its exploration of the "fertile multiplicity of languages" was "marked by moral anxiety over the confusion of tongues" at this time "when the local vernacular seemed to be losing its literary prestige" (74). Part II, "Language Politics," opens with an examination of three works expressive of tensions inherent in translation. First is Lo Somni, the complex late 14th-century work that Bernat Metge, a major figure in the development of Catalan prose narrative, adapted from an amalgam of Latin and Italian sources including material from Boccaccio. Woven through a lengthy synopsis is the evidence for Léglu's observation that Catalan literary culture developed as "a strikingly explicit agonistic process in which language, genre, and authors are set up in lively new dialogues" (84). The second of the three works is the odd, anonymous trilingual História de l'amat Frondino e de Brisona (c. 1400), in which a hybrid Occitan-Catalan narrative in verse is enhanced with rondeaux and virelais in French and complemented by the lovers' letters in Catalan prose. Léglu comments that the story "appears to conclude that visual communication is the only reliable form of language between the two confused lovers" (91). This obervation leads smoothly into the final work, an anonymous French manuscript of the early 16th century which "presents a tale as apparently simple as [the foregoing, but] entirely through images" (92). Léglu notes that this work "points to the fragility of narratives when they are robbed of their linguistic key" (95). More notable is her conclusion that "monolingualism emerges in late medieval Catalonia as the expression of an expansionist ideological agenda of the royal court. Paradoxically, it does so through the medium of translation" (97). The second of the three chapters (chap. 5 of the book) focuses on the 14th-century Catalan Frayre de Joy e Sor de Plaser "as a poem that stages the...