R. Brown-Grant et R. Dixon (éd.), Text/Image Relations in Late Medieval French and Burgundian Culture (Fourteenth-Sixteenth Centuries)

IV+267 p., 50 b/w ill. + 37 colour ill., 216 x 280 mm, 2015
ISBN: 978-2-503-55318-4

In recent years, scholars have increasingly acknowledged the range and value of the literary and artistic production of both France and Burgundy in the later Middle Ages. In this interdisciplinary collection of essays – the first to be devoted exclusively to works produced in these two cultural centres – contributors from the fields of art history and literary studies question established views on canonical texts such as the Roman de la rose, Ovide moralisé, Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, and the Middle French translation of Ovid’s Heroides. They also shed new light on lesser-known works such as Anne de Graville’s Beau roman, Martin Le Franc’s Champion des dames, the pseudo-historical Roman de Buscalus and Roman d’Olivier de Castille et d’Artus d’Algarbe, and the debate poem known as the Songe de la Pucelle. Key critical issues raised in these essays include the political circumstances governing the production and reception of late medieval texts, whether in manuscript or printed form; the significance of the representational strategies and painterly choices adopted by book illustrators; the evolving role of women as authors, artists, and consumers of medieval manuscripts and early printed books; and the ways in which the written, visual and even aural aspects of these texts could be combined together to cue the reader/viewer’s response. Engaging with the materiality of literary works through the prism of text/image relations, the volume makes fruitful connections between the literary and artistic spheres which are so often studied in isolation from each other. It will thus be of interest to all scholars in the disciplines of art history, history of the book, medieval French and francophone literature, and gender studies.

Rosalind Brown-Grant is Professor of Late Medieval French Literature at the University of Leeds. She has published on Christine de Pizan, late medieval French romance, Burgundian historical writing, and text/image relations in manuscripts.

Rebecca Dixon is Lecturer in French at the University of Liverpool. Her work to date has concentrated on late medieval Burgundian culture, vernacular prose and verse literature and literary adaptation, text/image relations in manuscript and early print, and costume and material culture.

Table of Contents

Part I: Allegorical Dream-Visions and Debate Poems

Friars in Love: Manuscript Illumination as Literary Commentary in Three Fourteenth-Century Manuscripts of the Roman de la rose (Paris, BnF, MS fr. 25526; Baltimore, Walters, MS W. 143; London, BL, MS Royal 19 B XIII), Jonathan Morton, ‘Entre deux sommes’: Imagining Desire in the Songe de la Pucelle, Emma Cayley, Limits of Representation in Late Fifteenth-Century Burgundy: What the Eye Doesn’t Hear and the Ear Doesn’t See, Helen J. Swift

Part II: Burgundian Prose Narratives:

Staging Transgression Through Text and Image: Violence and Nudity in the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (Glasgow, University Library, MS Hunter 252, and Vérard 1486 and 1498), Dominique Lagorgette, The Roman de Buscalus; or, the Art of Not Being French, Rebecca Dixon, Personal Drama or Chivalric Spectacle? The Reception of the Roman d’Olivier de Castille in the Illuminations of the Wavrin Master and Loyset Liédet, Rosalind Brown-Grant

Part III: Reworkings of Classical and Medieval Auctores

The Hybrid Art of the Compiler: Text/Image Relations in the Ovide moralisé of Colard Mansion, J. Chimène Bateman, Proliferating Narratives: Texts, Images, and (Mostly Female) Dedicatees in a Few Héroïdes Productions, Kathleen Wilson-Chevalier, Re-Presenting Emilia in the Context of the Querelle des femmes: Text and Image in Anne de Graville’s Beau Roman, Elizabeth L’Estrange

List of Manuscripts and Early Printed Editions, Bibliography, Index