IMC 2006: Sessions
Session 309: Understanding What's Not There in Medieval French Literature
Monday 10 July 2006, 16.30-18.00
| Moderator/Chair: | Karen G. Casebier, Department of French & Italian, University of Wisconsin, Madison |
|---|---|
| Paper 309-a | 'Aussy poeut memoire choisir … ce qui est mort ou absent': Understanding Mourning in Late Medieval dits (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan |
| Paper 309-b | Silence and Speech in Occitan Didactic Texts (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan |
| Paper 309-c | Enigma in the Arthurian Romances of Chrétien de Troyes (Language: English) Index terms: Language and Literature - French or Occitan |
| Abstract | Abstract paper -a: The topos of mourning present in dits by Machaut and Froissart, concerning a character’s imaginative recollection of what is no longer there, is taken up by later poets on a figurative level to articulate nuances in their relationships with earlier texts. This paper examines the mechanics of this poetics of mourning in Alain Chartier and Martin Le Franc. It focuses on how the essential features of mourning – its incompleteness and its repetitive structures – are imaginatively developed on a metatextual level to probe the processes of continuation and competition that are seen to characterise the poetic climate of fifteenth-century verse fiction. Abstract paper -b: The Occitan 'ensenhamens' [enseignements] tell us how to act in different situations. This paper will focus on the rules of talking and not talking, the rules describing what has to be thought, but not said, and why. |