medieval French literature – Page 3

Performing jeux-partis with graindelavoix

This second year of my Leverhulme project will involve a workshop with performers designed to help me think about my unnotated manuscript in a more musical way.

The source materials for large medieval chansonniers

How were large collections of lyric poetry (with or without music) assembled?

The Philosopher’s Pony Play

Image by Vassil — Personal work, CC0

For all that he is The Philosopher in the later Middle Ages, the most striking iconographical depictions of Aristotle from the period are of him on all fours, being ridden by a woman.

Sorting out the works of Gautier d’Espinal

Wikipedia’s list of Gautier’s works looked a bit thin to me, so I’ve edited the page (fingers crossed the edits persist!)

The fifth song in the grands chants is unique to Douce 308 and is thus transmitted to us without any melody. However, its versification makes it possible to sing it to the tune of a song with a similar poetic structure.

Dead peacock — Porrus kills Fezonas’s peacock in the first item in Douce 308, The Vows of the Peacock. Image, Bodleian Library.

The first thing promised as part of my Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship is now done.

The complete images of the manuscript Oxford, Bodleian Library, Douce 308 are now online. The photography is funded by part of the Leverhulme Major Research Fellowship that I was awarded for 2015-18 specifically to write a book on this source and what it might tell us about the culture(s) of vernacular song in the few decades either side of 1300. (Some viewers may find it easier to use this alternative link to view the images.)

Many thanks to the Bodleian Library for their great efficiency in getting this done in time for the project start date (1 Oct 2015), which will mean I can get going straight away. I was interested to be asked whether I actually wanted to withhold the open-access web-mounting of the images until after I’d written my book. While I’m glad they asked, I think anyone’s going to ‘beat me’ to saying exactly what I would say about it, and my general view is the more the merrier on people using these images and finding things to say about this wonderful and complex source. I certainly won’t exhaust it!

I’m looking forward to blogging bits and pieces of interesting stuff as I go along.