FREN501B

Studies in Medieval French Literature

Medieval Francophonie

Rouen, Bibliothèque municipale, 927, f° 145

Before the emergence of modern nation-states, the kingdom of France was a collection of feudal domains that displayed a somewhat relative allegiance to the king of France. The word “France” itself often referred solely to the Île-de-France region around Paris. In the South of what we now call France, people spoke and wrote in Occitan or Franco-Provençal. Conversely, French was spoken and written at the Anglo-Norman court of England and among educated Italian circles, as well as in Sicily. With the Crusades and the founding of the Crusader States in Outremer, French also spread to the Near East.

The concept of medieval French literature, often construed as referring to the literature written in France in the Middle Ages, should be more accurately understood as literature written in French during the period, within the context of a broad and multicultural Francophonie. Medievalists have been increasingly promoting the applicability of Francophone Studies to the medieval period in order to account for a literary production that isn’t defined by a particular nation-state, but connects diverse communities across various regions of Europe and the Near East who spoke dialects of langue d’oïl.

The seminar will focus on four emblematic works of medieval Francophonie:

• The Lais of Marie de France, written in England in the Anglo-Norman dialect by an author likely linked to the Angevin court, whose inspiration drew from the Breton and British folklore of her adopted land.
• The Voyage de saint Brendan by Benedeit, an Anglo-Norman hagiography/adventure tale about the Irish monk Brendan’s nautical quest for the Garden of Eden.
• The Devisement du monde by Marco Polo, a travelogue that reveals the extent of the “Global Middle Ages”, written by a Venetian merchant in Franco-Italian, a literary dialect characteristic of the educated circles of Northern Italy.
• The Cent Ballades d’Amant et de Dame by Christine de Pizan, a poetic celebration and indictment of courtly love written by an Italian-born author raised in Paris.

These four core works will be accompanied by excerpts from several other texts such as the Franco-Italian version of the Chanson de Roland, the chronicles of the Fourth Crusade by Geoffroy de Villehardouin and Robert de Clari, the translations of the Irish Dominican Jofroi de Waterford, the Fleur des histoires d’Orient by the Armenian Hayton de Korikos, as well as Anglo-French conversation handbooks and French travel guides to the Holy Land.

Language of instruction: French

Instructor: Dr. Patrick Moran