Giants are a ubiquitous feature of medieval romance. As remnants of a British prehistory prior to the civilization established, according to theHistorium regum Britannie, by Brutus and his Trojan foll
Written by one of the leading critics in medieval studies, this new book explores the representations of madness in medieval French literature. Drawing on a range of modern psychoanalytic theories and
The motet began as a form of sacred vocal music in several parts; a cantus firmus or tenor, drawn from sacred Latin chant, served as a foundation for one or more upper voices. The French motet was a w
Huot (medieval French literature, Pembroke College, Cambridge) tackles the enigmatic thirteenth-century poem Roman de la Rose. Begun by one author and completed by another, it has been considered porn
The Romance of the Rose was one of the most important works of medieval vernacular literature. It was composed in the thirteenth century and exerted a profound influence on literature in France, England, the Netherlands and Italy for the next 200 years. In this book, Sylvia Huot investigates how medieval readers understood the text, assessing the evidence to be found in well over 200 surviving manuscripts: annotations, glosses, illuminations, marginal doodles, rewritings, expansions and abridgements. This allows a picture to emerge of the interests and concerns of its readers, including such important fourteenth-century figures as the monastic author Guillaume de Deguilleville and the court poet Guillaume de Machaut. The book contains analyses of individual versions of the poem. It offers an interesting perspective on the interpretative difficulties of this learned and complex poem.
Armstrong (early French culture, U. of Manchester) and Kay (French, Princeton U.) report the findings of a four-and-a-half-year research project into the relationship between poetry and knowledge in F
Covering the period from the late thirteenth to the early sixteenth century, Poetry, Knowledge, and Community examines the role of poetry in French culture in transmitting and shaping knowledge. The v
