Songbook: How Lyrics Became Poetry in Medieval Europe by Marisa Galvez

Abstract

Reviews 227 pourquoi le narrateur ne peut s’approprier l’altérité d’Albertine. Les signes qu’il lit ou croit lire en Albertine sont marqués par une ‘différance’ qui diffère constamment la possibilité d’arriver à une vérité définitive sur la jeune fille. Le quatrième chapitre montre enfin comment l’art peut dépasser ces échecs et réconcilier Identité et Différence. Fülöp étudie, à partir de Platon et de ses théories de l’image, l’évolution de la relation entre la réalité et l’imagination à travers la Recherche. En prenant la décision d’écrire,le narrateur cesse d’opposer réalité et imagination,abandonne la métaphysique dualiste qui crée une distance entre l’objet et le sujet qui l’interprète, et accepte le monde tel qu’il s’offre à lui. Écrire est ainsi une prise de possession des pouvoirs de l’imagination qui permettent au narrateur de sentir et de dire le monde dans son Identité comme dans sa Différence. L’originalité de ce livre clair, convaincant et bien documenté consiste à offrir de la Recherche une perspective éthique au sens où le narrateur, qui dès le départ poursuit un projet littéraire, est aussi en quête d’une approche harmonieuse du monde, de la vie et de l’autre. Ripon College (WI) Dominique Poncelet Galvez, Marisa. Songbook: How Lyrics Became Poetry in Medieval Europe. Chicago: UP of Chicago, 2012. ISBN 978-0-226-28051-6. Pp. 281. $35. Galvez has written a book of incredibly ambitious scope. The first chapter alone considers the Carmina Burana with the Libro de Buen Amor. Subsequent chapters range almost equally far afield: whereas ch. 2 concentrates on early troubadour lyrics, and ch. 4 on fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Castillian cancioneros, ch. 3 compares the iconographic program in two troubadour manuscripts to that of the Cantigas de Santa Maria, the frescoes of the Palazzo Finco in Bassano del Grappa, and the Codex Manesse, and ch. 5 explores how “the transmission history of medieval songbook[s] notate modern medievalisms” (103). The overarching principle linking these diverse chapters is the notion of “songbook,” defined by Galvez as, “a multi-author and anonymous lyric anthology contained in a manuscript codex” (2). While the concept is appealing, unfortunately, the scope of the book is so vast that many of the most interesting arguments suffer from a lack of support, both argumentative and factual. For example, at the beginning of ch. 1, Galvez asserts that the “dance songs of the Carmina may have been performed for large festive gatherings, while the Libro’s lyric works were likely musically staged” (22). The use of the conditional “may” does not obviate the need to substantiate such statements—which are in fact significant to her later analysis—but the only support provided for these assertions is a footnote to the comment about the Carmina and it only references Spanke’s 1930 study. Galvez’s analysis is not helped by a discursive style that foregrounds ‘big claims’ (at the beginning of chapters and sections in particular but not exclusively), only later providing (sometimes quite limited) justification for them.As a result, the reader is too often left skeptical, rather than nodding in agreement with a potentially appealing critical approach. Indeed, the desire to push the analytical envelope is evident throughout the book. This can result, among other things, in fuzzy chronology and geography, even in simple statements, such as saying that troubadour manuscripts N (Padua, late thirteenth c.) and R (Toulouse, fourteenth c.) are from the“late Middle Ages”or calling the early thirteenth-century frescoes at Bassano del Grappa and an illuminated manuscript of Alfonso X’s Milagros (Escorial T.I.i, c. 1270–90)“contemporary”(116) to the same two chansonniers. All of this is unfortunate, as there are few scholars with the expertise to tackle such a comparative study, and Galvez is commended for her will to push the comparative envelope and examine together texts, and manuscripts, from different traditions and linguistic communities. Her arguments challenge some outdated ideas about chansonniers, and provide fresh readings of a number of fascinating lyric corpora...