In France and England of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the feudal obligations imposed on two parties by the mutual contract of vassalage tended to be derived more from the oath of fealty than from the act of homage, and to be expressed in terms of abstention from action which might endanger the other party or harm his or her property. But as Bishop Fulbert of Chartres stated in his letter to William V, duke of Aquitaine, in 1020, it was also necessary for the vassal to do right, and for the lord also to do right to the...

Dans son article « Réflexions sur leNibelungenlied», Jean Fourquet attirait l’attention sur « l’absence du surnaturel chrétien, que ce soit sous la forme de l’intervention divine dans le cours des événements, ou de l’influence, sur les décisions des héros, de leur qualité de chrétiens, de l’idée de leur salut » (283) et il ajoutait que, pour lui, « l’absence de l’ordre de la grâce [était] essentiellement une loi du genre, déterminée par la fonction de cette poésie destinée à la distraction des cours » (283). Il ne fallait absolument pas en conclure que « le [Nibelungenlied] reflèterait in...

At first glance, theLai de l’Oiselet, in the different versions it has come down to us, is a relatively unremarkable, if charming, fable-like tale. A little bird comes to sing every day in an enchanted garden, thereby perpetuating the miracle of its ever-temperate climate and fruitfulness. An unworthyvilaincaptures the bird, but releases it in exchange for three secrets, which turn out to be advice of a proverbial and somewhat commonplace nature. Having tricked its opponent, the bird flies away never to return, and the garden, deprived of its life-giving song, withers away.

The central character of the...

The title of my paper, “Didactic strategies in theRitterspiegel(the knightly mirror),” may sound quite martial. “Strategies” and “knights” suggest strife and battle-noise, terms which contrast strangely with the person of Johannes Rothe, a small-town clerk in late medieval Germany. But “strategies” and “knights” are instrumental for the two crucial terms of the title: “didactics” and “mirror.”

Strategies are employed to make the knights look into the mirror, i.e., to read the book. What they are supposed to see in this mirror are knightly virtues – and their own lack of them. How does Rothe make them look at the...

In several of his texts, Jacques Lacan uses the paradigm of courtly love as a model for desire. In his seventh seminar,L’Ethique de la psychanalyse(given in 1959–60 and published in 1986),¹ he looks at different aspects of courtly love, namely issues related to sublimation (of both subject and object), as well as questions of aesthetics and representation. Lacan examines courtly literature in order to see what it can reveal about the structural dynamics of desire and to explore the ways in which this artificial set of codes and conventions has structured our reality, our emotional make-up,...

In 1969, Pierre Bec introduced his definition of the two main registers that he believed characterized medieval French lyric, theregistre aristocratisantand theregistre popularisant. He preferred his own bipartition to those proposed by earlier scholars, because his was based neither on theme nor on origins, but rather on formal analysis of the poems. In 1972, Zumthor cited Bec’s scheme approvingly while nevertheless proposing his own set of registers, therequête d’amourand thebonne vie(251). Bec republished his scheme in 1974 and again in 1977 (1: 33–43),¹ noting the similarity to Zumthor’s which, however, he considered less...

I propose to examine four Old French poems by different authors, considering if these poems, all in the woman’s voice, have any features that allow the listener and the modern critic to determine the sex of the author.

Carolyn Larrington has summarized the arguments about women’s writing, noting that “whether women can, do and should use language in distinctively different ways from men has been a preoccupation of modern French feminist theory” (Larrington 229, referring to Moi 102–62). Larrington continues that the writing of “medieval women does show common features, stylistic traits which are not exclusive of women, but...

In recent work on thetrobairitz, the female troubadours, scholars have been exploring how the emergence of the female poetic voice affects the power relationship traditionally constituted by the feudal model which underliesfin’amor. Critics have attempted to determine whether the lady continues to represent herself as occupying the superior position in the hierarchy, appropriates “the masculine role” as the humble vassal, or represents herself as an equal partner as her position within the text shifts from object of desire to loving subject. The thirteenth-century Old Occitan romanceLe Roman de Flamenca, a text long recognized as being strongly influenced...

The “falsely accused queen” story, an adjunct to numerous epicenfances, is more than a folktale borrowed into late medieval literary narrative. It is a reflection of social concerns about inheritance, family and marriage conditions similar to those seen in maleenfanceswhich it parallels, as well as being a dilatory plot technique which allows interlace in the form of a further character to be followed, and finally, it is a model specular episode for “expansion by variation” favored by both romance and epic. These tales are indeed “femaleenfances” because of their relationship to maleenfancesaccounts and because...

The subject of incest, whether in historical or present society, has always received much attention from scholars in the arts and humanities. However, as a taboo of the highest order, the more extreme activities associated with the word “incest” can often obscure a broader understanding of its subtleties and gradations. Aside from fully-consummated sexual acts, there is also a wide range of intra-family relationships which are based upon incestuous tendencies. The interest of this study lies with an examination of incestuous tendencies found in the plots of medieval texts, and further, how to interpret these accounts using modern concepts of...

Among courtly romances, Philippe de Remy’sRoman de la Manekineis a rare example of a male-authored narrative of adventure with a female protagonist.¹ Nevertheless, the quest it plots of the protagonist’s initiation and integration into society is typical of the received romance tradition. Medieval romance, says Bloch,

serves as a virtual guidebook, a manual of instruction for the integration of the hidden self within the public sphere. The romance hero is precisely he who, having lived through a series of internal crises, either achieves – like Erec, Yvain, Cligès – a balance between personal desire and social necessity, or who – like...

Discussion of father-daughter incest in theDeus Amanzis not new. It was a subject of some dispute in the early days of editing manuscripts, and contemporary critics continue to comment on the incestuous nature of the father-daughter relationship in Marie’slai.

The threat of father-daughter incest was noted by the early scholars as a not uncommon motif. Today readers of theDeus Amanzmention it simply as a comment in passing, for although the father’s overweening love for his daughter is clearly pertinent to the development of the story as a whole, we also recognize that thislaiseems...

Incest, like identity, involves a tension between sameness and difference; where identity implies the establishment of categories and definitions, however, incest implies their collapse. Identification means both identifyingas, placing the subject within presupposed categories, and identifyingagainst, differentiating that subject from others. Incest dissolves boundaries and confuses categories, and so can be regarded as a denial or negation of identity. It is therefore fitting that the late fourteenth-century Middle English verse romanceEmarébegins with the threat of incest, forEmarécan be read as a narrative of lost and recovered identity, and in examining the ways in which...

Ma recherche porte actuellement sur les serments et les promesses en ancien français. Cette recherche s’inscrit en pragmatique, pragmatique dite de troisième génération, autrement dit l’étude des actes de langage et des verbes performatifs. J’applique la théorie linguistique moderne aux verbesjureretpromettreen ancien français. Et, puisque ces verbes sont attestés respectivement depuis le neuvième siècle pour l’un et le dixième siècle pour l’autre, rien ne semble a priori distinguer leur fonctionnement en français moderne et en ancien français.

Rapidement, l’étude du contexte s’est avérée pertinente pour ma recherche. Le contexte en effet s’est révélé un instrument méthodologique...

Much scholarly effort has gone into the study of the anagram (Jakobson, Kristeva, Wunderli), prompted by the writings of Saussure and following the 1971 publication of an (incomplete) edition of Saussure’s notebooks by Starobinski. The difficulty has always been to furnish “proof” – Saussure himself wondered if he were dealing with simple fortuitous coincidences (Jakobson 22). The challenge is to develop a reliable analytical approach permitting researchers to establish the presence of minimal phonemic units capable of operating in anagrammic procedures. In this article, we will present a computer-aided method of analysis (using the text retrieval program TACT) applied to a...

Que lesLaisde Marie de France continuent à opérer leur charme sur celui qui les lit, semble être un fait indéniable. Tout aussi indéniable paraît le fait que les douze lais n’ont pas toujours exercé un même pouvoir de séduction, témoins les lais d’Equitanet deChaitivelauxquels on a même refusé le titre de lai et qui se sont vus relégués dans le champ du fabliau (Harf 106–07). Des deux lais, celui duChaitivela été le moins prisé. On lui a reproché entre autres son manque de valeur littéraire, son style « embarrassé » (Tuffrau...

In the Grail romance, like in no other of Chrétien’s romances, episodes are connected in often imperceptible subtlety. This is accomplished, however, within a clearly discernable narrative structure. Such a seemingparadoxonof mysteriousness and clarity is particularly evident in Perceval’s internal wanderings from the mother to the hermit, which signify the psychological process of his growing out of childhood. Perceval’s wandering out of the forest and through the stations of the narrative mirrors inner evolutionary stages. The central thread in these external and internal movements is the relationship of the son to the mother. The narrative action and the...

When Thomas’s Tristran considers marriage, adequate terms escape his deliberation. He neither loves nor hates Ysolt of the White Hands; he loves her beauty and name (250–51).¹ He does not hate Queen Ysolt, but he is unable to have her (208–09; 232–35). He wants Ysolt of the White Hands because of his want for the Queen. Systematically, love and hate fail as antithesis. To want (voleir)and to be able (poeir),² repeated throughout his deliberation, refuse alignment.

As Per Nykrog argues, self-conflict organizes the narratives of the first generation of Old French romancers. It distinguishes the literary...

The Bayeux Tapestry is a 230-foot embroidery, made probably in English workshops during the second half of the eleventh century. This giant picture show relates the dramatic story of the Battle of Hastings in October 1066, when Duke William of Normandy defeated usurper Harold Godwinson and his Anglo-Saxon troops.

For scholars, the Tapestry is also a unique social document of eleventh-century Anglo-Norman civilization, and it is that aspect of it that inspires these remarks. My specific aim is to look for signs of an emerging society, ready to make room for the cultural amenities that we associate withcortezia. Two...

The biography of William Marshal, composed c. 1226, is still available only in the edition published by Paul Meyer at the turn of the last century asL’Histoire de Guillaume le Maréchal.¹ It is a work described by Dominica Legge as one of the great glories of Anglo-Norman biography and few will disagree with her conclusion: “From every point of view this is one of the outstanding productions in Old French. It is well known to historians, less well known to students of literature, and this is a pity” (306–08). Historians have indeed acknowledged the importance of theHistoire...

The topic of this paper is the definition of loyalty demonstrated in three thirteenth-century texts which present contemporary people. The behaviour of kings is contrasted with the justice and urbanity of knights: King John of England especially is inept, unfair and discourteous.

The chronicler Roger of Wendover, reporting on John’s Irish campaign in 1210, tells how John had the penny, halfpenny and farthing of English coinage struck for use in Ireland, till then moneyless; the coins were valid in both countries, and destined for his royal treasury. Apparently randomly, Wendover proceeds:

. . . the king . . . took...

In hisLibreor book of songs, the thirteenth-century troubadour Guiraut Riquier has left us a rich implicit account of his professional peregrinations, hopes, ambitions, resentments, and anxieties.¹ Hiscansosandvers, which he carefully dated and anthologized, indirectly chronicle the career of a poet who scoured the courts of Southern France and Spain, from 1254 to 1292, in quest of wealth and social standing. Riquier’s self-compiledchansonnierdiscloses two framing stories. One is the simulated autobiography of a lover. Riquier pretends to have spent many years of his life in wooing an idealized, distant lady, to whom he gives...

The late Quattrocento Italian humanist Bartolommeo Goggio presented his treatiseDe laudibus mulierumto Eleonora d’Este (Duchess of Ferrara, 1473–94) in 1487. The treatise recounted the actions and lives of worthy women who were, according to Goggio, superior to men in every respect.¹ A treatise written to illustrate the equality of women to men would have been remarkable enough in the Quattrocento, but Goggio asserts thesuperiorityof women. The one aspect of the work that is not surprising is that it came out of the Este court in Ferrara whose duchess Eleonora was daughter of Isabella di Chiaramonte...

The “epic”Entrée d’Espagne, composed in Italy probably in the first half of the fourteenth century, purports to set forth in the vernacular the account of Charlemagne’s Spanish conquest as recorded in Latin by the (pseudo) Turpin. Notable as innovation is the portrayal of its hero Roland, whose familiar epic profile is significantly nuanced in this text, making of him, in the words of one reader, “l’éclatante illustration d’une conception originale de l’héroisme épique.”¹ Henning Krauss and others have explored the socio-economic context of such a transformation, determinant not only for theEntréebut for other poems in the franco-italian...

Partant du constat que le songe animalier est un motif principalement épique,¹ je me suis interrogée sur son utilisation dans la littérature romanesque et plus précisément dans leLanceloten prose.

On y trouve onze songes différents.² Ces visions nocturnes ou diurnes (à l’occasion des siestes) n’arrivent qu’à sept personnages dont trois jouent un rôle de second plan dans le déroulement du récit: Hector, Hélain et la Demoiselle sans nom, qui a tiré Lancelot du puits; les quatre autres sont les personnages principaux: Arthur, Guenièvre, Lancelot et Galehaut. Hector, Hélain et la Demoiselle ne rêvent qu’une fois, ainsi que Lancelot...

There are four medieval werewolflais.¹ TheBisclavretof Marie de France² reappears in an Old Norse translation asBisclaret³ and again under the titleBiclarelin the earlier redaction of the Old FrenchRoman de Renart le Contrefait.⁴ Finally there is the anonymouslai Melion,⁵ which contains material analogous to Marie’s narrative, notably the hero’s entrapment in lupine form, the acceptance of the werewolf by the king, and the recovery of Melion’s human form. The structural divergences between the twolaisled Kittredge to suggest thatBisclavretandMelionwere “independent redactions of the same saga” (173). AlthoughMelion...

My argument starts from two propositions. The first is the following: that it is impossible to write a treatise or a tale of love, in later medieval France, other than in the intertextual and dialectical mode imposed by that best-seller of all medieval best-sellers, theRoman de la Rose, and by this I mean without engaging intertextually, in however clumsy or ill-informed a way, with thetopoiand the arguments of the Rose.¹ The second is that that engagement concerns primarily language: that the model, or models, of love and sexuality propounded by theRoseare so powerfully destabilising that...

Aunque Rafael Lapesa considere que, con excepción del Marqués de Santillana, “sería aventurado afirmar que cualquier poeta castellano anterior a Boscán tuviese familiaridad con elCanzonierepetrarquesco” creo menos que aventurado reconocer entre las páginas de nuestros cancioneros la esporádica huella del vate de Valclusa tanto en el deEstúñigacomo en elGeneral. Sería muy raro que Juan de Dueñas no hubiese conocido lasRime Sparsecuando compuso en Nápoles su muy imitada “Nao de Amor,”¹ por lo cual me parece acertado Pierre Le Gentil cuando propuso como fuente del poema el bellísimo soneto CLXXXIX de Petrarca:²

Passa la...

Mit diesen Worten beendet Hans Sachs seine Bühnenfassung desWilhelm von Österreich, eines Romans, der nicht den geringsten Zweifel an der Vorbildlichkeit der Minne seiner Protagonisten lässt, einer Minne, die so stark ist, dass sie in ihrer Idealität sogar den Totschlag am Freund rechtfertigt.² Wo Johann von Würzburg die adelige Heiratspolitik als die falsche Liebe vonder welt gitsære(W.v.Ö, V.4237) mit Verachtung straft, resümiert Hans Sachs:

Derhalben ist die lieb zu meiden,

Biß das man kumme in die eh,

Denn hab ein lieb, sonst keine meh (524,40–525,3)

Die SentenzUnd spar dien lieb biß in die eh/ Denn...