« Or vous dirai »: La Vocalité des Récits Historiques Français du Moyen Âge (XIIe-XVe Siècles)

Abstract

This article analyzes French medieval historical texts (romances, chronicles, and histories) from the 12th to the 15th century, and shows that during the Middle Ages, the vast majority of historical narratives were regarded as a form of storytelling. Textual evidence shows that numerous medieval historians dictated the story to a scribe, which explains why histories come across so often as verbal—rather than written—discourse. Moreover, although many historical texts came in voluminous manuscripts containing hundreds of pages, they were generally intended to be performed at court or in front of a local audience. But the historical narratives analyzed here are not exactly an oral genre, because unlike early chansons de geste and poems, they were not composed and transmitted in a strictly oral manner. This study argues that medieval histories are in fact a vocal genre, in the sense that although written, they strike the reader as a form of verbal storytelling.