Performing medieval narrative and song

Abstract

The bipartite event ‘Imagining French Narrative and Song c.1100–c.1350: Literary, Musicological and Performance Perspectives’ was held in the magnificent setting of St John’s College, University of Cambridge on 14 January 2023. It comprised a conference at the Old Divinity School—an impressive late Victorian edifice built in the Gothic Revival style—and a closing concert in the nearby medieval Round Church, founded in the early 12th century and modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Coincidentally marking the date of the 787th anniversary of the marriage in 1236 between an English king (Henry III) and a French noblewoman (Éléonore de Provence), plus also that of the annual medieval ‘Feast of the Ass’ (celebrating the Flight into Egypt, with its famous Latin and French conductus Orientis partibus referring to an ass ‘from Eastern regions’), there was perhaps no better occasion for ‘imagining’ medieval French romances and songs, both in terms of their international impact and also changing medieval perceptions of them, whether secular or sacred. Attended by around 35 delegates, the conference included 12 papers given by literary scholars and musicologists from universities in the UK, France, Belgium and the USA; this international mix thus set the groundwork for an exciting interchange of ideas between academics from frequently isolated yet closely overlapping disciplines.