Author: Rebecca Dixon
File Type: pdf
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 volume reveals the interplay between poet, text, and audience, and explores the key dynamics of later medieval French poetry and of the communities in which it was produced. Essays in both English and French are organised into three inter-related sections, Learned Poetry Poetry and Learning, Poetry or Prose?, and Poetic Communities, and address both canonical and less well-known French and Occitan verse literature, together with a wide range of complementary subject areas. The international cast of contributors to the volume includes many of the best-known scholars in the field the introductory essay is by Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet (Universite de Paris IV, Sorbonne), and keynote essays are provided by David F. Hult (University of California, Berkeley), Michel Zink (College de France), and Nancy Freeman Regalado (New York University). Edited by REBECCA DIXON (University of Manchester) and FINN E. SINCLAIR (University of Cambridge), with the participation of Adrian Armstrong (University of Manchester), Sylvia Huot (University of Cambridge), and Sarah Kay (University of Princeton). CONTRIBUTORS Suzanne Conklin Akbari, Mishtooni Bose, Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet, Rebecca Dixon, Thelma Fenster, Denis Hue, David Hult, Stephanie Kamath, Deborah McGrady, Amandine Mussou, Nancy Freeman Regalado, Jennifer Saltzstein, Finn E. Sinclair, Lori J. Walters, David Wrisley, Michel ZinkReviewA coherent and innovative collection. MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW This coherent and innovative collection of essays explores the development of the role of poetry as a vehicle for disseminating knowledge and creating community at a time when, paradoxically, prose was very much in the ascendant as the preferred literary form. MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEWThis volume of essays . beautifully incarnates the very topics it takes as guiding threads to explore a wide variety of literary examples and expressions from the late thirteenth to the early sixteenth centuries. (...) This volume will no doubt continue to help revitalize interest in a period that has sometimes been seen as the neglected stepsister of the high Middle Ages and has now begun to take its rightful place in the history of French letters. SPECULUM Taken as a whole, this volume supplies an assortment of knowledgeable studies, and several chapters are strongly innovative. H-FRANCE REVIEW Thirteen essays, all lucidly written (ten in English, three in French), are characterised by acute textual analysis, sensitive consideration of literary form, and perspicacious examination of the material context of manuscript production and transmission. FRENCH STUDIESThis tremendously rich and exciting volume, stemming from the AHRC Poetic Knowledge in Late Medieval France project, compellingly fulfils its aim to establish the significant role played by poetry (...) in the culture of knowledge of late medieval France. (...) This exemplary volume greatly expands and enriches scholarly horizons on the role of poetry in late medieval France. FRENCH STUDIES The thirteen essays in this volume provide a coherent and interesting overview of the role of knowledge and community in late medieval French poetic production, and will be welcomed by all working in the field as a valuable contribution to this growing area of scholarship. OENACH 1.1