The cultural agenda of Philippe de Vigneulles, translator of the Lorraine epic cycle into Middle French prose. Over fifty chansons de geste were reworked into prose between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries for patrons and audiences who demanded updated, de-rhymed versions of heroic songs. While most prose translations were commissioned by noble patrons, Philippe de Vigneulles (1471-1527), a cloth merchant of Metz, operated outside the system of patronage on self-imposed projects with a pronounced civic bias. His translation of the monumental Lorraine epic cycle into Middle French prose afforded him an opportunity to reconfigure the city's legendary past and validate the concerns of a prosperous merchant class. The craft of mise en prose is examined in the context of the author's larger cultural agenda as he weaves the epic legend into his civic, personal and aesthetic preoccupations. This perspective illuminates a previously neglected sphere of medieval literary production, revealing fundamental assumptions about the epic tradition and the power of prose in urban culture. CATHERINE M. JONES is Associate Professor of French and Provençal at the University of Georgia.

Professor Joseph J. Duggan, emeritus professor at the University of California (Berkeley) is an eminent scholar of Medieval Studies who has written seminal works on Romance Literatures (and Old French epics in particular). His work ranges from editions of medieval classics such as the Chanson de Roland to articles about troubadours’ lyrics and a monograph on Chrétien de Troyes. Here, fifteen contributions from his former students and colleagues offer literary, narratological, philological, and contextual studies of the texts he has taught and researched over his long and prestigious career.

This interdisciplinary handbook provides extensive information about research in medieval studies and its most important results over the last decades. The handbook is a reference work which enables the readers to quickly and purposely gain insight into the important research discussions and to inform themselves about the current status of research in the field. The handbook consists of four parts. The first, large section offers articles on all of the main disciplines and discussions of the field. The second section presents articles on the key concepts of modern medieval studies and the debates therein. The third section is a lexicon of the most important text genres of the Middle Ages. The fourth section provides an international bio-bibliographical lexicon of the most prominent medievalists in all disciplines. A comprehensive bibliography rounds off the compendium. The result is a reference work which exhaustively documents the current status of research in medieval studies and brings the disciplines and experts of the field together.

'Epic Arts in Renaissance France' examines the relationship between art and literature in 16th-century France, and considers how the epic genre became 'public' via realisations in various other art forms.

Il volume raccoglie gli atti del XXème Congrès International de la Société Rencesvals pour l’étude des épopées romanes (Sapienza - Università di Roma, 20-24 luglio 2015) e presenta lo stato dell’arte e le ricerche in corso sull’epica romanza medievale propriamente detta, sulla sua posterità nell’età moderna e sulla produzione non romanza a essa correlata, offrendo un panorama ricco ‒ se non completo ‒ degli attuali orientamenti scientifici e dei risultati raggiunti. Per il congresso di Roma ‒ cui hanno preso parte studiosi provenienti dall’Europa, dal Nord e dal Sud America e dall’Africa ‒ sono stati proposti i seguenti temi: I. Rome et l’Italie dans les chansons de geste; II. Phénomènes de cyclisation: grandes et petites gestes; III. Le XVe siècle: proses et renouvellements; IV. L’histoire des recherches sur la matière de France; a questi si aggiungono gli interventi raccolti nella sezione Varia.

An exciting new approach to one of the most important texts of medieval Europe. The story of the Trojan War has been told and retold across the ages, from Homer's Iliad and Virgil's Aeneid to recent film and television adaptations. The peoples of medieval Europe were especially enthralled with the tale of the siege of the great city by the Greeks, and by the fourteenth century virtually every royal house in Europe traced its ancestry to some long-ago Trojan warrior. The medieval West, however, had no access to Homer, and though Virgil was certainly read, the most influential version of the Troy story for centuries was that recounted in the Roman de Troie, by Benoît de Sainte Maure. This massive poem in Old French claimed to be a translation of two eyewitness accounts of the War, both actually late antique forgeries, but it is in reality a largely original tapestry of chivalric exploits, elaborate descriptions and marvellous creatures such as centaurs and Amazons. The love story of Troilus and Briseida was invented in its pages, later inspiring Boccaccio, Chaucer and Shakespeare. The huge popularity of the Roman de Troie allowed medieval dynasties to create new kinds of political authority by extending their pedigrees back into days of legend, and was an essential element in the inauguration of a new genre, romance. This book uses approaches from theories of translation and temporality to develop its analysis of the Roman de Troie and its context. It reads the text against Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain to argue that Benoît is a participant in the Anglo-Norman invention of a new kind of history. It develops readings grounded in both gender studies and queer theory to demonstrate the ways in which the Roman de Troie participates in the invention of romance time, even as it uses its queer characters to cast doubt upon the optimistic genealogical fantasies of romance. Finally, it argues that the great series of ekphrastic passages so characteristic of the Roman de Troie operate as lieux de mémoire, epitomizing the potential of poetry to stop time, at least in the moment. The author also provides an overview of the complex manuscript tradition of the Roman de Troie in support of the contention that the text deserves to be central to any study of medieval literature.

In the later Middle Ages, many writers claimed that prose is superior to verse as a vehicle of knowledge because it presents the truth in an unvarnished form, without the distortions of meter and rhyme. Beginning in the thirteenth century, works of verse narrative from the early Middle Ages were recast in prose, as if prose had become the literary norm. Instead of dying out, however, verse took on new vitality. In France verse texts were produced, in both French and Occitan, with the explicit intention of transmitting encyclopedic, political, philosophical, moral, historical, and other forms of knowledge. In Knowing Poetry, Adrian Armstrong and Sarah Kay explore why and how verse continued to be used to transmit and shape knowledge in France. They cover the period between Jean de Meun’s Roman de la rose (c. 1270) and the major work of Jean Bouchet, the last of the grands rhétoriqueurs (c. 1530). The authors find that the advent of prose led to a new relationship between poetry and knowledge in which poetry serves as a medium for serious reflection and self-reflection on subjectivity, embodiment, and time. They propose that three major works—the Roman de la rose, the Ovide moralisé, and Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy—form a single influential matrix linking poetry and intellectual inquiry, metaphysical insights, and eroticized knowledge. The trio of thought-world-contingency, poetically represented by Philosophy, Nature, and Fortune, grounds poetic exploration of reality, poetry, and community.