L'Agenda des Médiévistes

Ripercorrendo la vita del Roman de Renart dalla sua produzione all’esecuzione/ricezione, fino alla conservazione delle branches nelle raccolte antologiche, si delinea una storia redazionale fortemente influenzata dalle pratiche performative e dall’appartenenza del testo al genere della zooepica medievale, di cui l’oralità è componente fondamentale.

Proprio la presenza di alcuni tratti collegati alla sfera della voce isola un gruppo di branches dalle altre e ci restituisce due diversi Roman de Renart confluiti, per logiche estrinseche alla composizione dell’opera, nelle raccolte manoscritte come se fossero rami equivalenti dello stesso tronco.

E la volpe Renart se ne va di ramo in ramo tessendo una rete di allusioni intertestuali che illudono il lettore di trovarsi di fronte a un ciclo; paradossalmente sono proprio queste a ostacolare la realizzazione ciclica del Roman de Renart e a collocarlo in un genere intermedio tra la raccolta di testi indipendenti e il ciclo, la zooepica appunto.

Table des matières :

Massimo Bonafin, Maria Careri, Presentazione VII

Introduzione
1. La produzione del testo
2. L’intertestualità nel Roman de Renart
3. L’esecuzione del testo
4. La conservazione del testo

Conclusioni
Bibliografia
Indice dei nomi

Informations pratiques :

Marcella Lacanale, S’en est de branche en branche alez. Il Roman de Renart tra raccolta e ciclo, I libri di Viella, 2020 (Biblioteca di Studj Romanzi, 4). pp. 186, 17×24 cm, bross. ISBN: 9788833133287. Prix : 26 euros.

Source : I libri di Viella

In this collection of essays Gérard Gouiran, one of the world’s leading and much-loved scholars of medieval Occitan literature, examines this literature from a primarily historical perspective. Through texts offering hitherto unexplored insights into the history and culture of medieval Europe, he studies topics such as the representation of alterity through female figures and Saracens in opposition to the ideal of the Christian knight; the ways in which the narrating of history can become resistance and propaganda discourse in the clash between the Catholic Church and the French on the one hand, and the Cathar heretics and the people of Occitania on the other; questions of intertextuality and intercultural relations; cultural representations fashioning the West in contact with the East; and Christian dissidence in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Written in an approachable style, the book will be of historical, literary and philological interest to scholars and students, as well as any reader curious about this hitherto little-known Occitan literature.

Gérard Gouiran was born in 1945 at Le Rove, which was then a small village close to Marseille. His parents often spoke Occitan between themselves, but avoided doing so with their children for fear of damaging their education. It was only after studying Classics in Marseille and then Paris that Professor Gouiran rediscovered the Occitan language, and from then on he has devoted himself to medieval literature. Best known for his magisterial edition of the troubadour Bertran de Born, he has written – and spoken – widely on troubadour lyric, epic, and romance.

Table des matières :

Part 1: Women and Saracens in the Occitan chansons de geste

Chapter 1. Silhouettes of women in the Occitan and Old French Roland texts
Chapter 2. Belauda’s garden
Chapter 3. Aude, Iphigenia, Polyxena
Chapter 4. So dis la donna: ‘Oy, bel sira Rollan, mos maritz es en malaür lo gran’: Saracens and the Saracen woman in Rollan a Saragossa
Chapter 5. The Saracen from the depths of Hell to the gates of salvation
Chapter 6. Between Saracens and Christians, or the decapitated horse

Part 2: Aspects of war in Occitan chansons de geste and lyric poetry

Chapter 7. Per las lurs armas devon tostemps cantier: intertextuality effects between Ronsasvals and certain lyric planhz
Chapter 8. The first appearance of the herald in literature and the early war songs of Bertran de Born

Part 3: The Albigensian Crusade

Chapter 9. Drama queen? Worse: a jongleur! – or how to discredit an opponent: the representation of Bishop Fulk of Toulouse, alias Folquet de Marseille, by the anonymous author of the Song of the Albigensian Crusade
Chapter 10. The French against Montfort? The war councils held by Simon de Montfort in the second part of the Song of the Albigensian Crusade
Chapter 11. The good use of rebellion
Chapter 12. The Toulousains cry ‘Toulouse!’, the Gascons ‘Comminges!’ … The Comminges parallels in the Song of the Albigensian Crusade
Chapter 13. The troubadour and the lord: history as viewed by the anonymous author of the Song of the Albigensian Crusade
Chapter 14. Las Novas del heretje, or who benefits from propaganda?

Informations pratiques :

Gérard Gouiran, From Chanson de Geste to Epic Chronicle Medieval Occitan Poetry of War, Routledge, 2020. 236 p. ISBN 9781138493223. Prix : 96 £.

Source : Routledge

Cet ouvrage constitue la première étude d’ensemble de l’œuvre poétique yiddish d’Élia Lévita (1469-1549) et cherche à définir sa place dans la littérature de la Renaissance en analysant les transferts esthétiques et culturels ayant présidé à sa production. Il situe l’œuvre vernaculaire de ce savant hébraïste, proche des humanistes chrétiens, dans les traditions poétiques juives hébraïques et yiddish et dans la logique d’une affirmation du rôle de l’écrivain séculier et de la langue vernaculaire dans la société juive. Il analyse également la portée des modèles extérieurs, chrétiens, en insistant sur l’inscription des romans de chevalerie de Lévita dans l’évolution générale du genre chevaleresque en Italie. L’Arioste, et en particulier son Roland furieux, ont joué un rôle majeur dans le raffinement progressif du projet esthétique du poète yiddish. Par son ampleur et par sa variété, l’œuvre vernaculaire d’Élia Lévita constitue non seulement la première œuvre moderne de la littérature yiddish mais aussi un cas particulièrement évocateur de diffusion des modèles esthétiques de la Renaissance dans des catégories ethniques (les Juifs) et sociales (les classes populaires) que l’on aurait pu croire éloignées de ces mutations culturelles.

Arnaud Bikard, ancien élève de l’École Normale Supérieure (Ulm) et agrégé de Lettres Modernes, a préparé et soutenu une thèse de doctorat en Littérature Comparée à l’Université Paris-Sorbonne en 2014. Il est Maître de Conférences en langue et culture yiddish à l’INALCO.

Table des matières :

Introduction

Chapitre I : La personnalité de Lévita et son insertion dans le cadre de la Renaissance italienne
Chapitre II : La place de Lévita dans la création littéraire juive de la fin du Moyen Âge et de la Renaissance
Chapitre III : Expérimentations chevaleresques en Italie au tournant du XVe et du XVIe siècle
Chapitre IV : L’évolution de l’œuvre chevaleresque de Lévita : du paradigme de Pulci au modèle de l’Arioste
Chapitre V : l’œuvre satirique de Lévita, entre invective burlesque et dérision complice

Conclusion
Annexes
Bibliographie
Index des noms propres (personnalités et œuvres)

Informations pratiques :

Arnaud Bikard, La Renaissance italienne dans les rues du Ghetto. L’œuvre poétique yiddish d’Élia Lévita (1469-1549), Turnhout, Brepols, 2020 (Mediterranean Nexus 1100-1700, 6). 924 p., 4 b/w tables, 156 x 234 mm. ISBN: 978-2-503-56974-1. Prix : 195 euros.

Source : Brepols

The Basilica of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan, originally built under Ambrose (374-397), and radically restructured at the end of the eleventh century, is an extraordinary lieu de mémoire, containing the presence of medieval objects and monuments. Through the study of some of the renowned works conserved in the basilica, among which the chapel of San Vittore in Ciel d’Oro, the golden altar, and the St Ambrose ciborium, this book deals with the interaction between the building’s topology and its objects, the relics around which the basilica was built, and the notion of ‘migrants’. The aim, in other words, is to analyze, over the longue durée, how some objects became a reflection of the relics, and how the material sanctity stemming from them was used as an instrument of exclusion and inclusion in a problematic ethnic context. Dedicated photographic documentation, carried out specifically for this work, offers rich and sumptuous iconographic material underpinning the volume.

Ivan Foletti is professor of art history at Masaryk University, Brno, where he specializes in the study of the historiography of Byzantine studies and in the art of Milan, Rome, and the Caucasus in the late Antique and early medieval period. He is the head of the Center for Early Medieval Studies in Brno, editor-in-chief of Convivium, and director of the Hans Belting Library.

Table des matières :

Objects, relics, and migrants: a few introductory remarks
1. The apse of the Basilica Martyrum and the Milanese relics in the fourth century
Plates
Gervase, Protase and the lost apse
The Milanese relics and the construction of the city

2. The Sacellum of San Vittore in Ciel d’Oro and the birth of the cult of Ambrose
Plates
A controversial edifice
Images and relics
The image in the apse?
Victor’s apotheosis

3. Exile in Genoa, the relics of Ambrose, the Lombards, and the year 600
The Milanese bishops in exile
The cult of the relics of Ambrose in Milan

4. The golden altar and the Carolingians in Milan
Plates
A resplendent reliquary
The Milanese relics and Carolingian Milan

5. The apse narrative: Rome and the Empire
Plates
A martyrised mosaic
A new story for an ancient apse
Ambrose, Martin, and the unity between Lombardy and the Empire
Ambrose’s true face
Conclusion: Ambrose, his body, his image, and ethnic inclusion

6. The Sant’Ambrogio ciborium and the eclipse of Milan
Plates
A decorative palimpsest
An object and its context: the view from the nave
The Milanese saints raised to glory
A royal coronation in Milan?
Conclusion. Ambrose before Barnabas (and after Dario Fo)

Bibliography
Index of names
Index of places

Informations pratiques :

Ivan Foletti, Objects, relics, and migrants. The basilica of Sant’Ambrogio in Milan and the cult of its saints (386-972), I Libri di Viella, 2020 (Between. Images, Words and Objects, 2). pp. 250, ill., col., 21×21 cm, bross. ISBN: 9788867289509. Prix : 45 euros.

Source : I Libri di Viella

Medieval manors have long been the subject of academic study, though the ways in which these houses reflected and shaped – and were shaped by – their occupants to express social authority have not yet been fully explored. This book undertakes a wide-ranging and interdisciplinary examination of them, aiming to provide a fuller account of how concepts of space and domestic place were understood, represented, and used by their occupants in England and Normandy from c. 900 to c. 1200, and how this illuminates aspects of gender and authority in the period. Blending approaches from archaeology and history, it uses evidence from Anglo-Saxon wills, standing and excavated manorial sites in England and Normandy, and a variety of written texts from vitae to history to poetry, in order to delve into, deconstruct and reconstruct gendered notions of authority in the period. This book ultimately challenges ideas of gendered objects and places through the medieval construction of authoritative personae, and the use and representation of medieval manors, focusing on the household as a place and space of performance in the age of the Norman Conquest.

KATHERINE WEIKERT is Senior Lecturer in Early Medieval History at the University of Winchester.

Table des matières :

Introduction: Whys and Wherefores
Chapter One: Acting with Objects
Chapter Two: Experiencing Spaces I – People and Privacy
Chapter Three: Experiencing Spaces II – Buildings and Spaces
Chapter Four: Writing Places
Conclusions: The Curated Space

Informations pratiques :

Katherine Weikert, Authority, Gender and Space in the Anglo-Norman World, 900-1200, Boydell & Brewer, 2020. 2 colour, 1 black and white, 74 line illustrations. 232 pages. 24×17 cm. ISBN : 9781783275120. Prix : 75 £.

Source : Boydell & Brewer