GREEN, Virginia (editor), Medieval Author in Medieval French Literature, Palgrave Macmillan (Studies in Arthurian and Courtly Cultures), 2006, 272 p.
ISBN : 1403967717
Thirty-five years ago Roland Barthes proclaimed the death of the Author. For medievalists no death has been more timely. In medieval French literature there are no Authors, only authors - and enigmas. Is the medieval author a name or a function, an authority or an image? The way we answer questions shapes how we think about names such as Jean de Meun, Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, Christine de Pizan, or lesser-known figures like Gerbert de Montreuil, Gautier de Coincy, Baudoin Butor or David Aubert. The essays in this volume create a prism through which to understand medieval authorship as a process and the medieval author as an agency in the making. This book will appeal to all those who are interested in theoretical approaches to authorship and could serve as an introduction to medieval French literature for sophisticated readers. For specialists it delivers an assessment of current theoretical and methodological issues in medieval studies.
CONTENTS :
Introduction: Saint Marcel, Asthmatic and Martyr; V.Greene
Authorial Relays: Continuing Chrestien's Conte du Graal; M.Bruckner
D'un masque l'autre: les vicissitudes de l'auteur du roman au temps de Perceforest; A.Berthelot
Borrowing, Citation, and Authorship in Gautier de Coinci's Miracles de Nostre Dame; M.Switten
The Roman de la Rose as a Moebius Strip (On Interpretation); A.Leupin
The Names of the Rose; S.G.Nichols
Experiencing Self and Narrating Self in Medieval French Chronicles; S.Marnette
Neutrality Affects: Froissart and the Practice of Historiographic Authorship; Z.Stahuljak
Christine de Pizan's Status as Author in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Manuscript Miscellanies: The Evidence of Scribal Rubrics; K.Fresco
Portraits d'auteurs a la fin du Moyen Age: Tombeaux en majeste et epitaphes carnavalesques; J.Cerquiglini-Toulet
De face et de profil: le geste identitaire de l'auteur a la fin du Moyen Age; D.Bohler
Medieval Bestsellers in the Age of Printing: Melusine and Olivier de Castille; A.Pairet
What Happened to Medievalists after the Death of the Author?; V.Greene
Virginie Greene is Professor of French in the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures at Harvard. She is the author of Le sujet et la mort dans La Mort Artu (2002). Her articles on medieval literature have appeared in Arthuriana, French Studies, Les Cahiers de Civilisation Médiévale, and Le Moyen Age. Greene has also published articles on nineteenth and twentieth century literature in Bulletin d’Informations Proustiennes and PMLA.