| Abstract | Paper -a:
The paper explores the significance of the genre of the 'mirror for princes' for the study of later medieval political culture. For a long time mirrors have mainly been studied as sources for the history of political thought and ethic. In recent years, however, scholars, including the author of the paper, have drawn attention to the role of the genre as a medium of power. Especially its function as an instrument for the expression of social discontent has been highlighted. This implies authors of mirrors had to decide upon the codes, tactics, and discursive strategies to be employed in order to bring their message home. Mirrors therefore constitute valuable sources for the study of medieval political culture, not only in its ideological and ethical aspects - as has been recognised before - but also in its practical aspects. This because they help us to understand the way the struggle for power within the budding state was conducted. The paper will illustrate this with examples from mirrors from the 12th until 14th centuries and draw some tentative conclusions.
Paper -b:
Une fois le pouvoir usurpé par son habituelle ruse, il ne restait à Renart pour asseoir sa domination qu'à partir à la conquête des cours européennes. Conquête d'autant plus aisée que la noblesse, tant laïque qu'ecclésiastique, s'enticha de ce maître en malice. Le pape se montre d'ailleurs particulièrement intéressé par la manière de changer le droit en tort et le tort en droit. Le personnage de Renart se prêtait particulièrement bien à la satire politique et sociale, les auteurs de la fin du Moyen Âge tenaient ainsi l'instrument parfait pour dénoncer à travers les contes animaliers l'estat dou monde et la corruption des Grands.
Paper -c:
If 'geography' is the 'writing of the earth', then the 14th-century Parisian manuscript illumination and illustration of falconry visualizes its practical nature. As such Le Livre du Roi Modus et de la reine Ratio (1379) stands as a most unique Old French document in literary and artistic history, for we can recognize both its traditional instructional modes of morality and its clever illustrative means of interpreting medieval values upon French hunting protocols and courtly etiquette. This paper undertakes a focused genre study; that is, it will use one hunting text as an exemplum to explain the extent to which it constructs and reinforces the influence of instructional hunting narrative upon subsequent French hunting and literary works. In particular, using elements of genre theory will enable an analytical strategy that considers how words (metaphors, similes) and images (drawings, sketches, miniatures) reflect and construct social values, vicarious experiences, and dynamic individual actions. In turn it will enable insight into several moral ideologies and power struggles advanced through this visual and textual rhetoric toward relevant future hunting manuscripts and courtly entertainments. Thus, a brief accounting of hunting texts will place Roi Modus into historical and social context whereby we can envision its role and influence upon these select aristocratic groups. Then the examination will ultimately shed new light on the developing but rudimentary artistic and linguistic representation (thus construct meaning to promote ideology) of a popular and much beloved medieval French practice of falconry.
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