Medieval French Literature Research Articles

Living Death in Medieval French and English Literature by Jane Gilbert

pieces stand out. Merete Stistrup Jensen’s “Le travestissement narratif dans les écrits d’Isabelle Eberhardt”explores the multiple voices in the recently restored manuscripts salvaged at the time of this young and enigmatic author’s death. Although Eberhardt does at times adopt a feminine narrative voice,it is only when writing—and dressing— as a man that she can overcome the social and physical limits of her sex and,consequently, experience broader intellectual and creative freedom. Jensen carefully demonstrates how the recurring motif in Eberhardt’s works of liberty resulting from the abandonment or killing of a woman mirrors the author’s own struggles, whereby writing is possible only after the female point of view has been neutralized.While Jane Dieulafoy shares her contemporary’s preference for male disguises,they have little else in common. As Natascha Ueckmann points out, far from the expectation that nineteenth-century European women travelers deal with colonialism differently because they themselves are both colonizer and colonized, Dieulafoy projects the same ethnocentrism as her male counterparts. Paradoxically, it is her emancipation from the constraints her own culture places on women that provides Dieulafoy with the opportunity to be an overt accomplice in Western efforts to subjugate other cultures.Although the second section, “Genre et altérité,”contains only one article on French travel writing, it is perhaps the most provocative of all. By examining George Sand’s Un hiver à Majorque and Flora Tristan’s Les pérégrinations d’une paria, Christine Planté shows how these two contemporaneous authors, both famous and considered similar in their time, are in fact polar opposites when read from the perspective of otherness. Despite her inexperience as both a traveler and a writer, Tristan is more conscious and accepting of all forms of alterity, whereas Sand, who generally highlights humanist values in her works, shows pronounced intolerance in her travel narrative. Hiding her gender, her own otherness, Planté argues, causes Sand to disregard or devalue the cultural, linguistic, and environmental differences encountered in her travels. The third and final section,“Formes du voyage et possibles narratifs,”is the weakest in terms of thematic cohesion and analytic quality. One article painstakingly attempts to define different categories of female travel writers only to conclude that it cannot be done. Another suggests that women publishing in geographic or scientific journals reinforce colonialism, a well-worn and somewhat superficial position. Minor shortcomings aside, Voyageuses européennes introduces us to several courageous women whose actions and words place them well ahead of their time. Ohio University Herta Rodina Gilbert, Jane. Living Death in Medieval French and English Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. ISBN 978-1107-00383-5. Pp. 283. $90. In her introduction, Gilbert sketches the basic theoretical foundation of her study, defining some of the medieval attitudes toward death that she intends to explore, 262 FRENCH REVIEW 87.3 Reviews 263 and also certain philosophical arguments of Lacan related to death, particularly his readings of Antigone,and the Lacanian concept of entre-deux-morts.Chapter 1,“Roland and the second death,”is largely informed by Lacan’s ideas on the death drive, and also proposes different approaches to Roland’s death based on the major textual variants of the work. Chapter 2,“The knight as the Thing: courtly love in the non-cyclic prose Lancelot,” explores Lacan’s interpretation of courtly love, argues that the termination of the Arthurian order represents a kind of “collective death drive”(61), and considers some interesting ambiguities associated with Galehot, trapped in the state of entredeux -morts. The following portion of the study,“The ubi sunt topos in Middle French,” focuses on a ballade by Eustache Deschamps and the three ballades from Villon’s Testament related to the ubi sunt topos, including the famous Ballade des dames, highlighting complex patterns and tensions revolving around mortality and sexuality, and“Villon’s intense engagement with existence, extinction, and the literary”(150). In “Ceci n’est pas une marguerite: anamorphosis in Pearl,” the author probes the rich symbolic connotations of the marguerite, which she finds“linked to a debate relating the complex of life, death, and life beyond death to that of desire, love, and poetry” (169). The final...

A New History of Medieval French Literature by Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet (review)

A New History of Medieval French Literature by Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet (review)

Constantinople and the West in Medieval French Literature: Renewal and Utopia

Rima Devereaux's study is simultaneously broad yet detailed, drawing together people, places, and peregrinations to explore the literary representation of the Byzantine capital in ten Old French and Franco-Italian works of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By ranging across genres and themes — from emperors to princesses, cities to communities — she provides flavours of the admired and desired, of the fear of inferiority, and of the need for conquest. In a lucid and well-reasoned Introduction, the boundaries of the project are succinctly stated and its literary focus underscored. Devereaux builds on Krijnie Ciggaar's work in Western Travellers to Constantinople (Leiden: Brill, 1996) and presents translatio, her fil conducteur, as a way to move between concepts of renovatio (renewal) and aemulatio (imitation). This process is then distinguished from the admiratio (admiration) associated with utopian treatments of Constantinople. The work has three sections, which, broadly speaking, focus on terminological and intellectual debates, tensions between admiration and imitation, and the promotion and/or problematization of Western renewal. In Chapter 1 Devereaux contextualizes the key terms of her study, relating them to the Augustinian concept of the city, the role of the onlooker, and the potential value of intergeneric study. In her subsequent engagement with attitudes towards forms of kingship, marriage alliance, and territorial conquest, she questions the location of possible models of renewal and the means by which such transformation may be realized, also addressing the successes and failures of Constantinople as possible utopia and as ‘a Western textual artefact’ (p. 30). Despite the fact that this is primarily a literary study, Devereaux integrates her close analyses with historical details and manuscript contextualization; this can be seen in her discussion of Partonopeus de Blois (Chapter 3), connecting contemporary European marriages with the literary representations of East–West alliances, or in her treatment of notions of truth and history in relation to the Estoire de Venise and the Fourth Crusade (Chapter 6). Devereaux's skill lies in drawing together materials that may initially seem distinct, whether in terms of genre, language, or medium — perhaps most clearly shown in her comparison of Robert de Clari's Conquête de Constantinople and the Franco-Italian Macario (Chapter 4). The interest of this study also lies in the combination of less familiar works such as Marques de Rome (Chapter 5) with more frequently cited Old French sources such as the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne (Chapter 2). Although, at times, further engagement with the theoretical concepts mentioned, such as orientalism and otherness, might have given greater nuance to the overall focus on renewal and utopia, this minor shortcoming does not diminish the value of uniting literary texts and other media forms, examples of which include manuscript miniatures (Chapter 5) and Byzantine architecture (Chapter 3). The result is a thought-provoking and accessible study of Eastern and Western ‘sites of power’ (p. 3), in which Constantinople is seen to be a function or process as much as a physical space. The book also — perhaps unexpectedly — causes us to reassess the uses of stock literary themes such as the treacherous vassal or the maligned wife.

Essays in later medieval French Literature. The legacy of Jane H.M.Taylor, Ed. by Rebecca Dixon

Ce volume, par lequel quelques collegues et eleves ont voulu rendre hommage a Jane Taylor, s’ouvre par une double Introduction de Rebecca Dixon qui presente, d’abord, le choix de concentrer l’attention sur la litterature francaise «tardive», en rapport bien entendu avec la riche contribution de la dedicataire dans ce domaine (pp. xv-xxii), pour introduire ensuite «the legacy» de Jane Taylor (pp. xxiii-xxvi) et la liste de ses publications (celle-ci, qui occupe les pp. xxvii-xxxvi, est mise a ...

Remembering Boethius: Writing Aristocratic Identity in Late Medieval French and English Literature by Elizabeth Elliott (review)

Review(s) of: Remembering Boethius: Writing aristocratic identity in late medieval French and English literature, by Elliott, Elizabeth, Farnham, Ashgate, 2012, hardback, pp. 178, R.R.P. 55.00 pounds, ISBN 9781409424185.

Rediscovering the Horse in Medieval French Literature

Scholars of medieval French literature have often overlooked the horse as a purveyor of complex meaning within a text not only because it is mentioned in such works so often, but also because it is wholly common. The horse was one of the earliest domesticated animals in humanity’s history, and as such, it has no particular link to the realm of the merveilleux, superficially a source of creatures of richer allegorical or esthetic interest. An encounter with a frightening monster such as a dragon might represent a test of a knight’s martial skills or a challenge to his piety, whereas in contrast, what could possibly be the importance of the horse, such a ubiquitous, seemingly banal, inhabitant of the period’s literature? This study seeks (1) to elucidate the conception of the horse on the part of the medieval cleric and reader by exploring the mythical lore and contemporary bestiaries associated with the animal, and (2) to define the horse’s function in medieval romance and epic through an analysis of the relationship between the protagonist and his steed in several seminal works, most notably La Chanson de Roland and Alexandre de Paris’s Le Roman d’Alexandre.

Vernacular Voices: Language and Identity in Medieval French Jewish Communities (review)

Reviewed by: Vernacular Voices: Language and Identity in Medieval French Jewish Communities Anna Sapir Abulafia Vernacular Voices: Language and Identity in Medieval French Jewish Communities, by Kirsten A. Fudeman. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010. 254 pp. $59.95. Recent books on the history of medieval Europe have paid increasing attention to non-Christian elements of society in an attempt to move away from a christo-centric interpretation of the Latin Middle Ages and to move towards [End Page 180] a subtler understanding of the many different components which forged medieval culture. At the same time students of medieval Jewish history are increasingly realizing the importance of interpreting their material within the full context of the history of the lands in which medieval Jews found themselves. Kirsten Fudeman's book is an excellent example of these new trends. Combining her expertise in medieval French literature and linguistics with her knowledge of medieval Hebrew, she has produced a work which brings to life the Jewish men, women, and children of northern France (Zarfat) as they communicated with each other, interacted with their Christian neighbors and negotiated their interests with the Christian lords under whose jurisdiction they fell. Fudeman examines the French used by medieval Jews in Zarfat in order to find out what it can teach us about the ways Jews thought about themselves and their environment in the twelfth to early fourteenth centuries. In the Introduction and Chapter One she explores the languages medieval French Jews used: Hebrew and Aramaic for learned and religious purposes; French for daily oral communication amongst themselves and with Christians. In Fudeman's terminology Hebrew was their father tongue, French their mother tongue. Women had far less access to Hebrew than men. Eschewing emotive judgments on the quality of Jewish versions of vernacular languages which have bedevilled the historiography of Yiddish, Fudeman avoids terms like Judeo-French. Very sensibly, Fudeman prefers the concept of a flexible Jewish register in spoken French which was adapted according to circumstance. With fellow Jews Jews could use Hebrew words for specifically Jewish terms; with Christians they would obviously have to adapt their vocabulary to be understood. Interesting is the linguistic evidence that Jewish use of French followed the same regional variations as Christian French. In Chapter Two Fudeman offers a close reading of the rich material concerning the massacre of around thirty Jews in Blois on a trumped-up ritual murder charge in 1171. This material is in Hebrew, but it clearly describes, assesses, and interprets conversations which took place in the vernacular between the Jews of Blois, between Jews of different communities, between Jews and Christian lords, including King Louis VII, and between Christians themselves. Here one sees clearly how Fudeman's linguistic expertise encourages a fresh approach to texts that have been studied so thoroughly by other scholars. Fudeman carefully decodes the interweaving biblical models later redactors of the material incorporated to uncover subtle variations of speech which were determined by place and circumstance. Particularly interesting is how she explores the voices of men and women and the arenas in which they were heard. Pucellina with her close connections to Count Theobald played an essential role in the drama; Countess Alix with her [End Page 181] strong anti-Jewish feelings was influential through her position as the wife of Theobald. But the arena of these women was private, not public. This is not to say this made them any less influential, but as Fudeman suggests it did make their role more transient, if only because it was through male manipulation of language that the texts describing the events were handed down to posterity. It seems that Jewish women in Zarfat did not possess good enough Hebrew to author scholarly or literary texts. Fudeman thinks they were, in fact, more at a disadvantage than their Christian counterparts in this respect. We lack Jewish examples in France to match the writings of women such as Marie de France and Heloise, just to name two of the most famous. The following two chapters are more technical. Chapter Three analyzes the extant examples of Hebraico-French, i.e,. French written in Hebrew characters. These texts are listed in Appendix One. Fudeman argues...

Living Death in Medieval French and English Literature

Living Death in Medieval French and English Literature

A new history of medieval French literature

A new history of medieval French literature

Guy René Mermier [1931-2011]: Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Founder, Advisor and Friend of the Société Guilhem IX

Guy René Mermier [1931-2011]:Professor Emeritus, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor Founder, Advisor and Friend of the Société Guilhem IX Robert A. Taylor Guy René Mermier was born in Grenoble, France October 20, 1931, and died March 23, 2011 at the age of 79, from complications after surgery; his life was filled with love for his family and for France, his devotion to teaching and advising several generations of students, and his broadly-based interests in the world of culture and scholarship. His adolescent years were spent through the Second World War in occupied France; in 1951 he was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship for a year of study at Amherst College; making the year even more meaningful was the fact that he met his future wife, Martha Brinton, on the boat taking him back to France after his Fulbright year. In France Guy earned his Licence in 1953 and a Diplôme d'Etudes Supérieures in 1954 from the University of Grenoble; in the same year he married Martha, who has become well known in her own right in the field of social work, author of a highly regarded book outlining support systems to aid families in coping with mental illness. Returning to America, Guy completed a Ph.D. in Romance Languages and Literature at the University of Pennsylvania in 1961, with a thesis on Pierre de Beauvais' Bestiary, subsequently published in 1977 and again with an English translation and colourful illustrations in 1992; from graduate school he immediately accepted a position as Instructor, then Assistant Professor, at the University of Michigan, and apart from one year at the University of Massachusetts in 1964, he spent the rest of his career at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, where he became Associate Professor in 1966, Professor in 1980, and Emeritus Professor upon retirement in 1998. His professorial occupations consisted, as is normal, of teaching, administration, and academic research, and he made his mark in all three. [End Page 214] Teaching Guy was acclaimed as a learned, warm and dynamic teacher in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures, a tireless promoter of French and Medieval studies, and as a caring academic advisor and mentor; in 1994 he received an L.S.A. Excellence in Education award from his College of Literature, Science and the Arts, and in 1995 he was chosen for the Ruth Sinclair Award for concentration advising, in recognition of his many years of dedicated and effective work as an academic advisor to undergraduates. To assist in classroom teaching, he published books on the typically French disciplines of explication de texte and analyse de texte, and several popular editions and translations of medieval French texts. On the graduate level, he taught a wide variety of courses as well as chairing or co-chairing fourteen doctoral dissertation committees and serving on many others. Administration During his thirty-five years of dedication to the University, he served on many departmental committees, as well as participating actively on the Rackham Graduate School Executive Board, the academic judiciary, and the Senate Assembly. He directed the Michigan-Wisconsin academic year in Aix-en-Provence three times. For seventeen years, until his retirement, he directed the interdisciplinary undergraduate program Medieval and Renaissance Collegium (MARC), the forerunner of today's Program in Medieval and Early Modern Studies (MEMS). Guy was Co-Editor with Edelgard E. duBruck of the journal Fifteenth-Century Studies from its inception in 1978 until 1985, then served on its Advisory Board until 2010. Academic research Guy was a specialist in Medieval French and Occitan literature, though he contributed extensively to the overall study of France and of the whole of French literature and culture. His publications included a dozen major scholarly books, editions, and translations of major Old French texts, as well as more than 40 articles. His research on French and Occitan literature covered [End Page 215] the twelfth to sixteenth centuries, and sometimes led him past the Renaissance and into the twenty-first century. His interests were extraordinarily broad, ranging from troubadour poetry to hagiography, epic and drama, from romance narratives to reformist religion. One of his widely...

A New History of Medieval French Literature

A New History of Medieval French Literature

The Inner Lives of Medieval Inquisitors by Karen Sullivan (review)

Reviewed by: The Inner Lives of Medieval Inquisitors by Karen Sullivan Lola Sharon Davidson Sullivan, Karen , The Inner Lives of Medieval Inquisitors, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 2011, cloth; pp. 312; R.R.P. US$45.00; ISBN 9780226781679. In this fascinating book, Karen Sullivan, whose previous books include The Interrogation of Joan of Arc and Truth and the Heretic: Crises of Knowledge in Medieval French Literature, explores the motivations of selected medieval inquisitors as revealed by their words and actions. She reminds us that, however impersonally institutions may wish to present themselves, they are composed of individuals who possess subjectivity and hence the capacity for moral choice. In focusing on the individual inquisitor rather than on the historical development and circumstances of the Inquisition's operation, Sullivan sees herself as countering the impersonal emphasis of recent historians. As a professor of literature rather than of history, Sullivan is concerned with texts and their epistemic structures. She aspires to represent, in her own words, a New Humanism. Wazo was an eleventh-century bishop of Liège who believed that every effort should be made to convert heretics to the Church. Aquinas was a thirteenth-century Dominican who believed that every effort should be made [End Page 310] to protect the Church from heretics. If we understand love as an emotion that can be manifested both as charity and as zeal, we can see Wazo motivated by a charitable concern for the salvation of the heretic and Aquinas by a zealous concern for the salvation of the faithful. This contrast, between charity and zeal, structures Sullivan's book. Sullivan begins with Bernard of Clairvaux's zealous pursuit of Paris masters and Cathar heretics. Bernard's famous rhetoric abounds in images of vicious predatory beasts (heretics, Abelard) attacking innocent, defenceless women (the Church). Bernard's flat refusal to listen to any arguments for the defence provided a model for subsequent inquisitors. Bernard was not technically an inquisitor. Dominic Guzman, the founder of the Dominicans, was. Yet Dominic emerges as profoundly desiring the conversion of heretics. It was this, after all, which led him to found the convent at Prouille and to establish his order of humble preaching brothers to lead the erring back to the Church. Conrad of Marburg would have a hard time inspiring sympathy in anyone's book. It is difficult not to applaud the overdue murder of this sadistic, homicidal maniac. Conrad regarded heretics as followers of the Devil and thought it far better to burn a hundred faithful Catholics than to allow a single heretic to escape. From a penitential perspective, everyone is guilty and guilt can only be expiated through suffering. In torturing and burning the innocent, Conrad was opening for them the path of martyrdom and hence salvation, an argument that was to provide an enduring justification for the Inquisition. With Peter of Verona, the focus is on the rhetoric of his martyrdom as it was constructed immediately following his death at the hands of an assassin hired by heretics. Himself from a heretical family, Peter was dedicated to converting his former co-religionists, but it was his passive acceptance of death that made him an exemplar of an innocent Church murderously assaulted by its enemies. In Bernard Gui, we come closest to the impersonal figure of the ideal inquisitor. A tireless administrator, Gui served for seventeen years as inquisitor of a notoriously heretical region and wrote one of the most important inquisitorial manuals. Often perceived as relatively lenient, given the large number of people he failed to burn, he is nevertheless placed by Sullivan in the zealous camp for his indifference to the heretics' welfare and his preoccupation with the performative, hence educational, nature of the inquisitorial process. Bernard Délicieux was a Franciscan who incited his countrymen to rise up against the (Dominican) inquisitors who were (unjustly?) accusing them [End Page 311] of heresy, defaming their good name, seizing their goods, and torturing and burning their bodies. Unsurprisingly, he died in a papal prison. Bernard emerges as a dedicated revolutionary, ultimately indifferent to the question of heresy. Sullivan finishes with Nicholas Eymerich, composer of an inquisitorial manual later expanded by Francis Peña. It...

Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women's Work in Medieval French Literature

Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women's Work in Medieval French Literature

E. Jane Burns . Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women's Work in Medieval French Literature . (The Middle Ages Series.) Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press . 2009 . Pp. viii, 264. $59.95.

E. Jane Burns . Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women's Work in Medieval French Literature . (The Middle Ages Series.) Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press . 2009 . Pp. viii, 264. $59.95.

E. Jane Burns, Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women's Work in Medieval French Literature. (The Middle Ages Series.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Pp. viii, 264; 18 black-and-white figures. $59.95.

E. Jane Burns, <i>Sea of Silk: A Textile Geography of Women's Work in Medieval French Literature</i>. (The Middle Ages Series.) Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009. Pp. viii, 264; 18 black-and-white figures. $59.95.

Lors est ce jour grant joie nee: essais de langue et de littérature françaises du Moyen Age ed. by Michèle Goyens, Werner Verbeke

romance relates the story of Guillaume, prince of Sicily, kidnapped at a tender age by a werewolf. Concurrently, we learn of the Spanish prince Alphonse, who was transformed into that werewolf by his stepmother. The adventures of this duo turn the romance into a mirror for princes (125–26), as the werewolf demonstrates chivalric virtue despite his bestial appearance. The anonymous author’s skill as a versifier and story-teller are well established by Sconduto. Sconduto concludes her study with several late Renaissance discussions of werewolves, a topic in vogue in theological and literary circles. Among these are Jean Bodin’s De la démonomanie des sorciers (1580), Claude Prieur’s Dialogue de la lycanthropie (1596) and Beauvoys de Chauvincourt’s Discours de la lycantropie (1599), to name but three. Religious strife in the sixteenth century had led to an increased interest in werewolves, now closely tied to witchcraft and to worship of the Devil. These primary sources have been carefully studied by Montague Summers (Werewolf [1933; rpt. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 2003]) and Adam Douglas The Beast Within: A History of the Werewolf [New York: Avon, 1992]), both quoted repeatedly by Sconduto. She ends the chapter on the werewolf renaissance with a summary of the last major werewolf case in Western Europe (169), the trial of the Coutras adolescent Jean Grenier or Grainier (169–78), and a demonstration of 1603 judicial efforts to separate lycanthropy from mental illness . Sconduto concludes that werewolves of the twelfth century are a different breed than those of the sixteenth and that it is the latter group that haunts the modern imagination (200), observing that werewolves are “a reflexion of their time” (200). The author provides translations of all non-English citations; Old and Middle French texts are printed, Latin texts not. This book probably began as a dissertation, and at times, it still reads as such. It is disappointing that Sconduto’s research survey did not include German-language secondary works (e.g., Manfred Bambeck’s “Das Werwolfmotiv im Bisclavret” Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie 89 [1973]: 123–47). Tracing the werewolf motif is a meritorious idea, and Sconduto has found every example of note. Though it is doubtful that she has added to our understanding of well-studied tales such as Bisclavret, she has made the fascinating story of Guillaume de Palerme better known, for which she is to be commended. Given current popular interest in werewolves (a search of Amazon.com brought up more than 2,000 items relating to the theme), Metamorphoses could well be a useful enticement, luring students to medieval French literature. University of Louisville (KY) Wendy Pfeffer GOYENS, MICHÈLE, et WERNER VERBEKE, éd. Lors est ce jour grant joie nee: essais de langue et de littérature françaises du Moyen Age. Leuven: Leuven UP, 2009. ISBN 978-905867 -740-2. Pp. xv + 198. $55.00. This collection of eight essays addressing various aspects of medieval French language and literature was assembled in honor of Willy Van Hoecke, a distinguished Belgian philologist, who retired in 2004 after a remarkably productive 40-year career. Although the essays cover a wide range of literary and linguistic topics, they are primarily focused on the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Claude Buridant (Université de Strasbourg) in a lengthy, well-documented 806 FRENCH REVIEW 84.4 essay of 50 pages, “Phraséologie historique du français,” examines the role of certain fixed phrases in Old French, exploring patterns of creation and resistance to change, and assessing the importance of this linguistic phenomenon in the production of literary texts. The essay integrates Buridant’s own contributions to this area of research into a larger “aperçu panoramique” (43) reflecting the work of numerous philologists. Brigitte Callay (Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania) focuses on a problematic verse from the prologue of Guillaume d’Angleterre (“Crestiëns dit, qui dire siaut...”), exploring the rich ambiguities and complexities of the verb, dire, as utilized in other Old French texts. Colette Van CoolputStorms (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) focuses on differences between the Romanz de Dieu et de sa Mere by Herman de Valenciennes, composed toward the end of the twelfth century, and the Biblical passages which Herman recasts in his...

Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability (review)

Reviewed by: Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability Bethan Tovey Edward Wheatley. Stumbling Blocks Before the Blind: Medieval Constructions of a Disability. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010. Pp. xii, 284. $70.00. The key question in this survey of medieval texts about blindness is why medieval French literature was “cruel toward and satirical about blind characters while English literature was much less so” (4). In order to formulate some answers to this question, Edward Wheatley brings together an impressive array of sources. These include a number of widely known and widely studied works, such as Langland's Piers Plowman and Froissart's Chroniques, but he nonetheless succeeds in offering readers new perspectives on these familiar texts. In reaching his conclusions [End Page 380] about the position of the blind in England and in France, Wheatley takes the reader through some fascinating customs and stories, such as the French entertainment involving blind men chasing a pig with cudgels and the horrific tales of children being deliberately blinded in order that they might be put to work as beggars. Wheatley's approach is strongly informed by modern disability theory, an area that over the past decade has come to be of increasing interest to medievalists. Like scholars such as Irina Metzler (Disability in Medieval Europe [2006]), Wheatley seeks to adapt theoretical models of disability to the medieval context. In order to do this, he posits a “ ‘religious’ model of disability” (x), which parallels the modern medical model in seeing the discourse of disability as institutionally controlled and dominated. In the medieval period, however, the controlling institution is the church rather than the medical profession. The role of organized religion in controlling the epistemological categorization of disability has of course been discussed by a number of theorists in sociology and other disciplines, and Wheatley builds on this scholarly background to make a persuasive argument for the particular centrality of religion to medieval constructions of disability. Like most modern theorists writing about disability, Wheatley examines the distinction between “disabled” and “impaired,” a distinction that is highlighted and promoted by the social model of disability. Simply put, impairment is a biological category, which refers to a difference from the physical norm, whereas disability is considered to be a social category and refers to the external barriers faced by people with impairments. However, although Wheatley affirms the utility of this distinction in the discussion of the medieval evidence, his discussion seems to use the two terms interchangeably, referring to “impaired people” and “disabled people” without any apparent rationale behind the choice of term in each case. Because of the tendency in general discourse to refer to what the social model calls “impairments” as “disabilities,” it is not surprising to find writers on the subject falling into the trap of using “disabled” in its general sense, but it is nonetheless rather confusing for the reader. Despite this, Wheatley's employment of disability theory is nuanced and considered, providing an innovative way into his material. This theoretical discussion comprises Chapter 1 of the study. The following chapters move neatly and persuasively from the general to the particular. The second chapter gives the reader an overview of the historical context of blinding, comparing the role of blinding in medieval [End Page 381] French judicial and political processes with the general absence of this kind of mutilation in medieval England. Wheatley also discusses the institutionalization of blindness through the creation of hospices, again comparing the far greater prominence of blind people in France with their apparent neglect in England. This chapter provides a solid historical foundation upon which the following textual discussions can be based. In the third chapter, Wheatley examines the common trope of the spiritual blindness of the Jews, and the way in which this association of blindness with discourses of Jewish evil and sinfulness had the concomitant effect of implying that the blind were themselves sinful and deserving of distrust and marginalization. Following this, the fourth and fifth chapters consider the humiliation of the blind through their role in comedy and their association with sexual transgression. Wheatley discusses the genres of fabliau, drama, and romance, with a particularly interesting discussion of...

Narrative Style in Burgundian Chronicles of the Later Middle Ages

This article offers a narratological and stylistic analysis of three Burgundian chroniclers whose works have hitherto been neglected by scholars of late medieval French literature. I argue that there is far more individuality across these texts than has previously been recognized by modern critics and show how each author’s particular conception of his role as a historian determined his narrative style, one which varied according to whether he saw himself primarily as a compiler of sources, an eye-witness, or a moralist. As a complement to an historical approach which would analyze these narratives in the context of the particular historical circumstances in which they were produced and of the political allegiances of the authors and their patrons, an appreciation of the specific narrative and stylistic strategies which these chroniclers adopted in order to persuade their readers of the veracity of their accounts allows a deeper understanding of how these texts functioned as political literature.

'Queil boen professeur, mult enseinné, queil boen collegue' Essays in Honour of Brian Merrilees / Mélanges offerts à Brian Merrilees (review)

Reviewed by: 'Queil boen professeur, mult enseinné, queil boen collegue' Essays in Honour of Brian Merrilees / Mélanges offerts à Brian Merrilees Maureen Boulton (bio) Carol J. Harvey, editor, with assistance from Margaret Burrell 'Queil boen professeur, mult enseinné, queil boen collegue' Essays in Honour of Brian Merrilees / Mélanges offerts à Brian Merrilees. Special issue, Florilegium 24 (2007). $35.00 This special issue of Florilegium, the journal of the Canadian Society of Medievalists, is a splendid tribute to the long teaching career and prolific research of Brian Merrilees, recently retired from the Department of French (Victoria College) of the University of Toronto. A distinguished international group of scholars has contributed the dozen articles that make up this excellent collection, and the topics generally reflect Prof. Merrilees's interests in editing Anglo-Norman texts, and in medieval French linguistics and lexicography. The collection opens with a group of articles on literary subjects, the first two dealing with French influence in Lombardy (Jeanette Beer on the Bestiaire d'amour) and Scotland (William Calin on René d'Anjou's Livre du cuer as a source for King Hart). Glynnis Cropp's examination of the figure of Nero in medieval French literature also traces the introduction and use of the word tyran so often used to describe him. The Anglo-Norman section contains four articles exhibiting varied approaches to the subject. Perhaps the most novel is Margaret Burrell's attempt to identify the geological events and locations that might have inspired the descriptions of Hell in two twelfth-century texts (Benedeit's Voyage de Saint Brendan and Marie de France's Espurgatoire seint Patriz). Delbert Russell and Tony Hunt's contribution is a welcome edition of two previously unpublished pieces from the famous Tristan manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Douce d.6): the verse 'Debate of Humility and Pride' and a prose version of the 'Legend of the Holy Rood.' Pierre Nobel's painstaking comparison of the Genesis portion of the Bible anglo-normande and the Bible of Jean de Sy demonstrates that although both translators relied on a similar model, the latter also personalized his translation by relying directly on the Vulgate and by incorporating explanatory material from the Historia Scholastica. Reflecting his work as editor of the Anglo-Norman Dictionary, David Trotter's article is much more abstract, examining the differences between modern and medieval approaches to semantics. The 'Bele Alis Sermon,' edited in the last article in the collection (by Robert Taylor and a group of his former students) also has Anglo-Norman links: it has been attributed to Stephen Langton and is preserved in several Insular manuscripts. [End Page 441] The articles of the last section of the collection are related to linguistics and lexicography. Reporting on a joint project of the Université d'Ottawa and the Université de Nancy, Pierre Kunstmann reports on the Dictionnaire électronique de Chrétien de Troyes: the first stage of the project was launched in 2007 (http://www.atilf.fr/dect/), and the second stage is well advanced. Anne Grondeux explores the limitations of medieval Latin glossaries as a source for semantic evolution of words. Serge Lusignan illustrates the spread of Picard dialect beyond its regional borders through the travels of the members of the D'Estrée family. In a lightervein, Giuseppedi Stefano has collected from Middle French sources a litany of burlesque saints, with the comic special powers attributed to them. This volume contains much of interest to scholars and students of medieval French language and literature, and the editions of three Anglo-Norman texts are particularly significant. With its great diversity of subjects and approaches, this collection illustrates beautifully the vitality of medieval French studies, both in Canada and abroad. It is a worthy tribute to one of Canada's outstanding scholars of medieval French. Maureen Boulton Maureen Boulton, Department of Romance Languages, University of Notre Dame Copyright © 2010 University of Toronto Press Incorporated

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature (review)

The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature (review)