12 research outputs found
Clergie , Clerkly Studium , and the Medieval Literary History of Chréétien De Troyes\u27s Romances
No full textThis article traces the development of medieval literary history across the thirteenth century through manuscript readings of Chréétien de Troyes\u27s romances. Redefining clergie as the clerkly pursuit of learning, the author argues that scribes played an important role in shaping Chréétien\u27s romances and establishing their place in medieval literary history. Examining manuscript collections centred on Cligéés, the author delineates synchronic and diachronic shifts in the organization and presentation of Chréétien\u27s manuscripts, evaluating the roles that different scribes and compilers played in the formation of a Chréétien corpus and the development of a romance genre
The Paratext to Chrétien de Troyes\u27s Cligés: A Reappraisal of the Question of Authorship and Readership in the Prologue
No full textStarting with the premise that medieval manuscripts exhibit paratextual vestiges of their auctores, redactors, copyists, and readers, this article re-examines the question of authorship and readership in Chrétien de Troyes\u27s prologue to Cligés (c. 1176-80) through the lens of paratextual references to the implied author\u27s signature, allusions to possible titles of his previous works, marginal annotations of interpretative readings, and cases of significant manuscript variance. Firmly grounded in the manuscript, editorial, and critical tradition of Cligés, this reading re-evaluates the tripartite thematic structure of the prologue, hypothesizing the paratextual effect that the opening list of literary tides, the suspenseful presentation of the hero, and the authoritative claim for the location of chevalerie (chivalry) and clergie (culture) in France might have had on medieval audiences and may have on modern readers. Exploring the significantly different versions in which two families of manuscripts transmit the same ideas, this reading finally shows how the prologue equivocates and subverts any one definite interpretation and engenders a sense of irony and alterity that captivates the reader and opens the threshold to new interpretations
The medieval forms and meanings of Francois: The political and cultural vicissitudes of an ethnonym
No full textThe article looks at the evolution of the ethnonym Francois in the Middle Ages and its significance to Germanic peoples known as Franks in the context of their cross-cultural relations with Muslim, Byzantine and British people. The author analyzes chronicles of the First Crusade and examines the use of Francois as an exonym and an autonym, and its role in the development of the French identity
An \u27Other\u27 Scene, an \u27Other\u27 Point of View: France\u27s Colonial Family Romance, Protée\u27s Postcolonial Fantasies and Claire Denis\u27 \u27Screen\u27 Memories
No full textThis article challenges the widely held view that in Chocolat/Chocolate (Denis, 1988) the female protagonist, named \u27France\u27, owns the point of view. It argues that the film rejects such an exclusive narrative mode, and invites the spectator to reinterpret the story through the perspectives of others, especially that of the houseboy Protée. Drawing on Freudian and Lacanian psychoanalytical theories, this article re-examines three key flashback scenes (the mirror scene, the shower scene, and the big box-office scene), taking Protée\u27s vantage point, while engaging with the para-text of Sartre\u27s, Oyono\u27s and Denis\u27 own postcolonial views. The article finally shows that the boy\u27s point of view is as relevant as the little girl\u27s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR
The »Other« Medieval French Alexander: Arthurian Orientalism, Cross-Cultural Contact, And Transcultural Assimilation in Chrétien de Troyes’s Cligés
No full textEn tenant compte du climat xénophobe des croisades cet article recense la réception de Cligés, roman de Chrétien de Troyes dont la plus grande partie de l’action se passe en Grèce, et explore les stratégies dont l’auteur se serait servi pour en déjouer un mauvais accueil. On examine d’abord les idées que les Francs se faisaient des Grecs par le biais de la réception contemporaine de l’Énéide et du Roman d’Alexandre. On examine par la suite comment Cligés cadre avec ces perspectives. Cet article pose en principe que, par le truchement du père de Cligés, prince grec stratégiquement appelé »Alexandre«, Chrétien nuance l’image du traître byzantin de la largesse et de la prouesse qu’incarnaient Alexandre le Grand, le roi Arthur, et les chevaliers de la Table Ronde. Le récit des aventures arthuriennes d\u27Alexandre n’a pas uniquement la fonction d’assurer un accueil favorable du roman mais aussi d’offrir le héros éponyme comme exemple de la fusion de la culture occidentale et orientale au temps des croisades
The >other< medieval French Alexander. Arthurian Orientalism, cross-cultural contact, and transcultural assimilation in Chrétien de Troyes's Cligés
No full textParatexts to Frida Kahlo\u27s oeuvre: The relationship between the visual and the textual, the self and the other, from the self-portraits to the diary entries
No full textThis article examines the relationship between the visual and the textual in Frida Kahlo’s paintings and writings. It argues that an understanding of this relationship would offer a better picture of Kahlo’s oeuvre. The article begins with an examination of the dedicatory inscriptions in the self-portraits, engaging with Gérard Genette’s concept of paratext and Philippe Lejeune’s autobiographical pact, as a prelude to the study of the relationship between text and drawings in the diary. In a close reading of the diary, informed by Jacques Lacan’s theories of subject formation and object relations, the article goes on to show that the workings between the visual and the textual represent the split that constitutes the subject in both the self-portraits and the diary. In the first instance, the subject is riven between seeing oneself and being seen by others. In the second, the subject, partly visualized, partly ‘textualized’ (‘photo-graphié’, as Lacan puts it) constitutes itself through the game of metonymy and metaphor in the chain of signification of the diaristic narrative. Metonymy and metaphor in the diary represent Kahlo’s desire for the Other which Diego embodies for her. The article concludes that the Other plays a generative role in Kahlo’s painted and written self-portraits and that the scenography of the Other contributes to the form and content of the diary as a textual self-portrait
