The contrast between the familiar social space and the world beyond has been widely recognised as an organising principle in medieval literature, in which the natural and the supernatural alike are set off against human society as alien and hostile. However, the study of this antithesis has typically been restricted to the spatial aspect whereas the literature often exhibits seasonal patterns as well. This dissertation modifies the existing paradigm to accommodate the temporal dimension, demonstrating that winter stands out as a season in which the autonomy of the human domain is drawn into question in both Anglo-Saxon and early Scandinavian literature. In Old English poetry, winter is invoked as a landscape category connoting personal affliction and hostility, but it is rarely used to evoke a cyclical chronology. Old Icelandic literature likewise employs winter as a spatial category, here closely associated with the dangerous supernatural. However, Old Icelandic prose furthermore give winter a place in the annual progression of the seasons, which structures all but the most legendary of the sagas. Accordingly, the winter halfyear stands out as the near-exclusive domain of revenant hauntings and prophecy. These findings stand in stark contrast to the state of affairs in Middle English poetry, which associates diverse kinds of adventure and supernatural interaction with florid landscapes of spring and summer, and Maytime forests in particular. Even so, the seasonal imagery in <em>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</em> makes clear that Middle English poets could use the contrastive functions of winter to no less effect than authors in neighbouring corpora. In partial explanation of authorial choices in this regard, it is proposed that winter settings are employed especially where a strong empathic response is desired of the audience.

The contrast between the familiar social space and the world beyond has been widely recognised as an organising principle in medieval literature, in which the natural and the supernatural alike are set off against human society as alien and hostile. However, the study of this antithesis has typically been restricted to the spatial aspect whereas the literature often exhibits seasonal patterns as well. This dissertation modifies the existing paradigm to accommodate the temporal dimension, demonstrating that winter stands out as a season in which the autonomy of the human domain is drawn into question in both Anglo-Saxon and early Scandinavian literature. In Old English poetry, winter is invoked as a landscape category connoting personal affliction and hostility, but it is rarely used to evoke a cyclical chronology. Old Icelandic literature likewise employs winter as a spatial category, here closely associated with the dangerous supernatural. However, Old Icelandic prose furthermore give winter a place in the annual progression of the seasons, which structures all but the most legendary of the sagas. Accordingly, the winter halfyear stands out as the near-exclusive domain of revenant hauntings and prophecy. These findings stand in stark contrast to the state of affairs in Middle English poetry, which associates diverse kinds of adventure and supernatural interaction with florid landscapes of spring and summer, and Maytime forests in particular. Even so, the seasonal imagery in <em>Sir Gawain and the Green Knight</em> makes clear that Middle English poets could use the contrastive functions of winter to no less effect than authors in neighbouring corpora. In partial explanation of authorial choices in this regard, it is proposed that winter settings are employed especially where a strong empathic response is desired of the audience.

This dissertation examines the function of textual communities in England from the early Middle Ages until the early modern period, exploring the ways in which cultures and communities are formed through textual activities other than writing itself. I open by discussing the characteristics of a textual community in order to establish a new understanding of the term. I argue that a textual community is fundamentally based on activity carried out in books and that perceptions of linguistic distance stimulate this activity. Chapter 1 investigates Bede (c. 673–735) and his interest in multilingualism, coupled with his exploration of the boundaries between the written and spoken forms of English. Picking up on an element of Bede's work, I argue in Chapter 2 that Alfred (r. 871–899) and his grandson Æthelstan (r. 924/5–939) found new ways to make textuality the defining quality of the emerging West Saxon kingdom. In Chapter 3, I focus on the intralingual distance in the textual community surrounding the works of Ælfric (c. 950–1010) and Wulfstan (d. 1023). I also discuss the role of contemporary or near-contemporary manuscript use in forming a textual community at the intersection of ecclesiastical and political power. In Chapter 4, I examine the activities of a textual community in the West Midlands in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By glossing Old English texts and rethinking English orthography, this textual community both renewed the work of Anglo-Saxon writers and enabled the activity I discuss in Chapter 5. Chapter 5 argues for a more constructive rationalization of the curatorial and editorial activities of Matthew Parker (1504–1575) than has been presented hitherto. I argue that Parker's cavalier methods of conserving and editing his books in fact represent responses to the textual models he found in those manuscripts. An appendix presents the text and translation of the preface to Parker's edition of Asser's Life of King Alfred. I close with a discussion of the production and use of books, followed by an illustration of the ongoing importance of textual community in England by highlighting the layers of use in a single manuscript (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Hatton 20) that links together the chapters of this dissertation.

This dissertation examines the various ways Anglo-Saxon authors interpreted and adapted Genesis 10–11: the Table of Nations and the Tower of Babel narrative. Although Genesis 10–11 offered Christians of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages a scripturally authorized understanding of the origins of ethnic and linguistic diversity of the world, its nature as an ancient Jewish text that deals with matters more suitable to its original audience than to its late antique and medieval readers allowed these later readers to transform the meaning of the text in order to give it a significance more fitting to their own times. In the first section of my dissertation, I treat the topos of the number 72, which becomes prominent when authors of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages read it into the Table of Nations as the number of descendants of Noah’s three sons. My first chapter deals with the initial development of this topos in Christian and Jewish writings of Late Antiquity; my second chapter with the topos in the Latin writings of early Anglo-Saxons, from the biblical commentaries from the School of Canterbury to Alcuin; and my third chapter with the topos in the writings of later Anglo-Saxons, from King Alfred to the Old English texts of the eleventh century. In the second section of my dissertation, I treat the interpretations of the Tower of Babel as they form and are informed in Late Antiquity and Anglo-Saxon England. As in the first section, three chapters are presented: the first on the initial developments in Late Antiquity; the second on the continual development into the Latin authors of early Anglo-Saxon England; and the third on the mainly Old English authors of the later Anglo-Saxon period.

Comment le motif de la marque insensible du diable a-t-il pu se frayer un chemin au sein du discours théologique, juridique et médical de la fin de la Renaissance jusqu'à s'imposer comme une pièce essentielle du crime de sorcellerie? Selon quels mécanismes et à partir de quels systèmes de croyance cette marque corporelle en est-elle venue à connaître une si large diffusion et une aussi grande acceptation tant chez les gens du livres que parmi les couches populaires? En cette époque marquée par la grande chasse aux sorcières et le développement de l'investigation scientifique, l'intérêt que les savants portent à cette étrange sémiologie constitue une porte d'accès privilégiée pour aborder de front la dynamique du déplacement des frontières que la démonologie met en oeuvre au sein des différents champs du savoir. Cette thèse a pour objectif d'étudier le réseau des mutations épistémologiques qui conditionne l'émergence de la marque du diable dans le savoir démonologique français à la charnière des XVIe et XVIIe siècles. Nous examinerons par quels cheminements l'altérité diabolique s'est peu à peu intériorisée dans le corps et l'âme des individus sous l'influence grandissante des vertus de l'empirisme, de la méthode expérimentale et de l'observation. En analysant la construction rhétorique de la théorie des marques du diable et en la reliant aux changements qui s'opèrent sur la plateforme intellectuelle de l'Ancien Régime, nous entendons éclairer la nouvelle distribution qui s'effectue entre les faits naturels et surnaturels ainsi que les modalités d'écriture pour en rendre compte. / How did the motive of the Devil's Mark wend its way through the theological, legal and medical discourse at the end of the Renaissance to such a point that it became a critical component of the crime of witchcraft? Through what mechanisms and what belief systems did this idea of the Devil's Mark become so widely disseminated and greatly accepted among both the scholars and the general public? In a period marked by the Great Witch Hunt, as well as the development of scientific investigation, the fact that the scholars are interested in this strange semiotics is a very interesting starting point to address head-on the shift in boundaries that demonology brought about within these different fields of knowledge. The purpose of this thesis is to study the network of the epistemological mutations that shaped how the Devil's Mark emerged in French demonological knowledge between the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th century. We will review how diabolical otherness gradually became internalized in the individuals' heart and soul under the increasingly powerful influence of empiricism, experimental method, and observation. We will analyze the rhetorical construction surrounding the Devil's Mark theory and relate it to the changes that took place in the intellectual platform of the Ancien Régime in order to shed light on the new classification that appeared between natural and supernatural facts, as well as on the rhetorical strategies used to report on them.

Ce travail analyse les transformations du Graal en comparant sa représentation dans les romans médiévaux et dans trois textes de théâtre modernes. Le Graal, apparu dans la littérature au Moyen Âge, reste une source d'inspiration pour les écrivains modernes au point de gagner, avec le temps, un statut légendaire. L'objet de prédilection de la littérature arthurienne a évolué de façon significative dès le Moyen Âge, où il reste cependant confiné aux formes narratives. Après le « festival scénique sacré » (Bühnenweihfestspiel), Parsifal, de Wagner présenté en 1882 à Bayreuth, des œuvres plus récentes réactualisent le mythe en cherchant à l'adapter au théâtre. Jean Cocteau, en 1937, dans Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde, présente un Graal inaccessible, immatériel. En 1948, Julien Gracq, dans Le Roi Pêcheur, inscrit le Graal dans l'opposition entre le profane et le sacré. Jacques Roubaud et Florence Delay, dans les éditions de 1977 et 2005 de Graal Théâtre, optent pour une récriture où les représentations du mythe se côtoient et se confrontent. Ces textes de théâtre modernes, où la représentation du Graal se situe au cœur du projet d'écriture, entrent ainsi en relation directe avec les œuvres médiévales. Ils s'inscrivent dans une redéfinition de l'objet qui se renouvelle sans cesse depuis Le Conte du Graal de Chrétien de Troyes. Dans les trois cas, la représentation du Graal entretient des relations contradictoires de filiation et de rupture avec la littérature arthurienne de l'époque médiévale. L'hypothèse principale de cette recherche se situe dans la problématique de la récriture comme transformation d'un héritage. Plus précisément, il sera question de comprendre comment la représentation du Graal dans les textes de théâtre pose problème et comment cette question est modulée, travaillée par les auteurs en termes rhétoriques, stylistiques et dramaturgiques. L'utilisation de la parodie, d'anachronismes et de voix dramatiques nouvelles, par exemple, permet aux auteurs modernes de revisiter et de changer le rapport à l'objet. Le Graal se redéfinit dans des contextes historiques et dans un genre distincts de leur source du Moyen Âge. / This work examines the transformations of the Holy Grail from medieval romances to modern plays. The Holy Grail, which first appeared in the Middle Ages, remains a source of inspiration for modern writers and gained, over time, a legendary status. This important feature of Arthurian literature has evolved significantly since the Middle Ages, where it remained however confined to narrative forms. After the festival (Bühnenweihfestspiel) where Wagner’s Parsifal was first presented in 1882 in Bayreuth, more recent works have renewed the myth by adapting it to the theatre. Jean Cocteau, in 1937, in Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde, presented an inaccessible and intangible Grail. In 1948, Julien Gracq, in Le Roi Pêcheur, placed the Grail at the core of the opposition between profane and sacred. Jacques Roubaud and Florence Delay, in editions of 1977 and 2005 of Graal Théatre, opted for a rewriting where contradictory representations of the myth coexist. These modern dramas, where the representation of the Grail is at the center of the writing experience, are thus in direct connection with medieval works. They are part of a redefinition of the object that has constantly renewed itself since Chrétien de Troyes’ Conte du Graal. In all three cases, the representation of the Grail shows conflicting relationships with the medieval Arthurian literary heritage. The main hypothesis of this research lies in the idea that rewriting has to do with the transformation of a legacy. More specifically, it comes to understand how the representation of the Holy Grail is dealt with in modern dramas, how it is modulated by the authors in rhetorical, stylistic and dramaturgical terms. The use of parody, anachronisms and new dramatic voices, for example, allows modern authors to revisit and change their relation to this object. The Grail is thus redefined in different historical contexts and in a genre quite distinct from medieval romances.

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Cette étude explore les phénomènes de diffraction qui se produisent dans le discours des romans arthuriens en vers du XIIIe siècle. Le discours, selon Genette, correspond à la manifestation de la subjectivité dans un texte. Nous avons sélectionné comme corpus primaire un échantillon de huit œuvres arthuriennes dites « parodiques » de l’époque : Le Bel Inconnu, de Renaut de Beaujeu, Gliglois, Hunbaut, Fergus, de Guillaume le Clerc, Méraugis de Portlesguez, de Raoul de Houdenc, Les Merveilles de Rigomer, de Jehan, Claris et Laris et Floriant et Florete. À travers ces œuvres, nous observons les manifestations, les mécanismes et les tendances évolutives de divers procédés liés à la diffraction discursive. Dans le premier chapitre, nous traitons de l’enargeia intradiégétique, qui survient donc lorsqu’un personnage raconte une scène au discours direct dans le texte, et qui représente une diffraction de la parole narrative. Dans le deuxième, nous étudions l’entrelacement, qui correspond à une diffraction de la diégèse qui est marquée par des commentaires du narrateur. Les marques de conscience générique, qui se manifestent lorsqu’un personnage rend explicite sa conscience et connaissance des rouages de la tradition littéraire dans laquelle il s’inscrit, font l’objet du troisième chapitre : elles constituent une diffraction du savoir narratif. Au bout de nos observations, nous sommes en mesure de constater que tous ces procédés, ainsi que la diffraction qu’ils représentent, se complexifient, se régularisent et sont davantage soulignés dans les œuvres plus tardives du XIIIe siècle. / This study explores the diffraction that occurs in thirteenth-century Arthurian romance discourse. Genette defines discourse as the manifestation of subjectivity in text. We have selected eight “parodic” Arthurian romances as our main corpus: Renaut de Beaujeu’s Le Bel Inconnu, Gliglois, Hunbaut, Guillaume le Clerc’s Fergus, Raoul de Houdenc’s Méraugis de Portlesguez, Jehan’s Les Merveilles de Rigomer, Claris et Laris and Floriant et Florete. With these works, we observe the manifestations, mechanisms and evolutions of different stylistic features that are related to discursive diffraction. In the first chapter, we study intradiegetic enargeia, which occurs when a character describes a scene in direct discourse; it represents a diffraction of narrative speech. In the second chapter, we discuss interlace, considered to be a diffraction of diegesis that is punctuated with narrative comments. Marks of generic awareness occupy our third chapter: they occur when a character signals their awareness or knowledge of the literary tradition in which they participate. They constitute a diffraction of narrative knowledge. At the end of our observations, we find that all these stylistic features, as well as the diffraction they represent, are used more regularly, complexly and emphatically in the later thirteenth-century romances.

Mémoire en recherche-création / La poésie lyrique en langue romane, également connue comme lyrique courtoise, est un genre littéraire qui se développe dans les cours aristocratiques du sud de la France, entre les XIIe et XIIIe siècles, sous la plume des troubadours. Ces hommes et seigneurs féodaux issus des cours méridionales composent des textes lyriques, voués à la performance orale, en langue occitane (aussi connue comme langue d’oc), à partir d’un art de composition dont ils sont les inventeurs : le trobar (« art de trouver »). Dans leurs compositions, un thème récurrent concerne une conception particulière du sentiment amoureux dans les rapports socio-érotiques entre les sexes : la fin’amors (« véritable amour »). Alors que le trobar a fait l’objet d’études structurelles et formelles, des approches sociologiques, ethnologiques et même psychologiques ont tenté de comprendre les origines et le fonctionnement de la fin’amors comme idéologie et système culturel. Suivant les études psychologiques, notre projet souhaite considérer la fin’amors comme un chemin d’initiation masculine, hypothèse que nous explorons au moyen de deux dispositifs, l’un critique (l’essai), l’autre narratif (la création). L’essai prend ainsi pour objet d’étude les textes des troubadours Bernart de Ventadorn et Jaufre Rudel, et s’intéresse à certains de leurs thèmes poétiques qui manifestent des dimensions subjectives, spirituelles et genrées, encore problématiques pour la critique, notamment : la nature du joy, les rites de l’asag et de la mort-par-amour chez Bernart, ainsi que la dame lointaine de Jaufre. À travers le filtre d’un cadre théorique tripartite, notre analyse œuvre à réinterpréter et resignifier ces motifs pour pouvoir les exploiter dans notre création littéraire : la Canczon de Virès (« la Chanson de Virès »). Œuvre romanesque et dramatique, vouée à une mise en scène, elle investit l’architecture des chansons de geste pour explorer notre hypothèse de départ et interroger les problématiques liées à l’oralité des textes poétiques. La Canczon chante ainsi le récit épique de huit jeunes hommes dans un village fictif du Midi qui, guidés par les esprits de huit troubadours, traversent des épreuves fantastiques pour atteindre une nouvelle maturité. Cette démarche s’inscrit dans le Mouvement Mythopoïétique Masculiniste du poète Robert Bly, et dans le cadre théorique de la psychologie analytique (Jung, 1981 ; Moore et Gillette, 1990, 1993) et de la mythocritique (Eliade, 1959 ; Campbell, 2008). / Romance language lyric poetry, also known as courtly lyric, is a literary genre that was developed in the aristocratic courts of southern France, between the 12th and 13th centuries, by the troubadour poets. These feudal lords from the southern courts composed lyrical texts, meant to be sung in public, in the Occitan language (also known as langue d’oc), through a poetic art: the trobar (“art of finding”). A recurring theme in their texts touches on a particular conception of love between men and women: fin’amors (“true love”). While the trobar has been subject to structural and formal studies, sociological, ethnological and even psychological approaches have attempted to understand the origins and functions of fin’amors as a cultural system. Our aim in this project is to reconsider fin’amors as a male initiation path; we will explore this hypothesis through a critical (the essay) and a narrative (the creation) device. The essay centers around the texts of troubadours Bernart de Ventadorn and Jaufre Rudel, and focuses on certain poetic themes which manifest subjective, spiritual and gendered dimensions – that remain problematic for research –, such as: the nature of the joy feeling, the asag and death-for-love rituals in Bernart’s poetry, as well as Jaufre’s distant lady. Through the lense of a theoretical framework, our analysis proposes a reinterpretation of these motifs in order to exploit them in our literary creation: the Canczon de Virès (“the Song of Virès”). This dramatic work, meant to be staged, borrows the architecture of the great French epic poems to explore our hypothesis and question the lyric texts’ oral dimension. Thus, the Canczon sings the epic tale of eight young men in a fictional southern French village who, under the guidance of eight troubadours’ spirits, undergoe fantastic trials to reach a new form of maturity. Our approach draws on Robert Bly’s Mythopoietic Men’s Movement, as well as the theoretical framework of analytical psychology (Jung, 1981; Moore and Gillette, 1990, 1993) and mythocriticism (Eliade, 1959; Campbell, 2008).

Ce mémoire présente les résultats et la réflexion d’une recherche qui avait pour but d’analyser les liens entre la Bible médiévale et les romans du Graal écrits au XIIIe siècle. À cet effet, nous avons eu recours aux paraphrases et aux traductions bibliques en prose écrites en ancien français afin de montrer comment les romans à l’étude réécrivaient l’héritage biblique qu’ils comportaient. Le mémoire s’articule en trois chapitres. Le premier chapitre présente les corpus principal et secondaire et en les mettant en contexte. Ce chapitre traite également de la Bible au Moyen Âge, c’est-à-dire de son statut et de sa diffusion dans la société. Le deuxième chapitre s’attache à l’analyse des réécritures bibliques présentes dans le corpus principal en traitant les questions de l’allégorie et de l’exégèse et en analysant la Légende de l’Arbre de Vie. Enfin, le troisième chapitre étudie la mise en récit du rêve comme processus d’écriture commun à la Bible et aux romans du Graal. Cette recherche montre comment les auteurs médiévaux reprennent non seulement les récits de la Bible, mais aussi ses procédés d’écriture. Cette dynamique de reprise permet également de voir comment les textes traitent la matière biblique dans le développement spécifique du roman du Graal, en s’intéressant particulièrement au phénomène de christianisation du roman. / This MA thesis introduces results of a research which is analysing links between the medieval Bible and the Grail novels written during the 13th century. For that purpose, we had recourse to biblical paraphrases and translations in prose written in old French as a secondary corpus. This dissertation is divided in three chapters. The first chapter introduces the main and secondary corpuses by putting them into context. This chapter also deals with the Bible in the Middle Ages, that is to say with its status and with its diffusion in the society. The following chapter analyses the biblical rewritings found in the corpus by dealing with the questions of allegory and exegesis, mainly in the Legend of the Tree of Life. Finally, the third chapter studies the writing of the dream as a common process of writing found in the Bible and taken back by the Grail novels. In the end, medieval authors took back not only the tales of the Bible, but also its writing processes. The study of this dynamic of resumption also allows demonstrating how texts incorporate biblical material in the specific development of romance, a literary genre in emergence at that time.