This thesis takes a fresh, character-based approach to the Íslendingasögur. It is inspired by a narratological study that unites the functional and structural role of characters with their human, individualistic portrayal. My major objective is to demonstrate the important connection between characterisation and structure in the sagas. By drawing attention to characters that I term narrative triggers, I offer a way of reading the sagas that relies both on the narrative conventions of tradition and on the less predictable, personal interactions between the cast of any given saga. In the case of both major and minor figures in the Íslendingasögur a certain type of character is often present to perform necessary motivational functions, allowing the plot to develop. In Part I I emphasise the functional aspect of these characters, before exploring unusual examples that emphasise their individuality in Part II.The motivation of the plot is linked throughout to the figure of the ójafnaðarmaðr. A secondary objective is to provide a clearer understanding of the nature and function of this commonly occurring character type. The ójafnaðarmaðr is frequently alluded to in scholarship,but this thesis provides the first in-depth study of the portrayal of these characters. The quality that informs them (ójafnaðr,‘inequity’, lit. ‘unevenness’) is a threat to one of the core values of saga society and hints at an ‘unbalancing’ of social interactions and of the narrative equilibrium itself. That this unbalance leads to changes in the social structure of the setting is a key factor in driving the plots of the sagas along. For this reason, a detailed examination of the figure of the ójafnaðarmaðr is long overdue: they can be observed to perform a specific narrative function but are always fitted to suit their particular context. Focussing on the structural conventions of character introduction, Part I establishes my methodology and catalogues the examples of characters introduced as ójafnaðarmenn. The scope is limited to those introduced as such because it allows me to establish for the first time the full corpus and conventions of these characters and their introductions. Following developments in our understanding of the oral background to the sagas, my approach to these narratives is built upon the evidence of their shared origins in pre-literate storytelling [...]. The intersection between functionality and individuality in character brings certain aspects of the Íslendingasögur to the fore. Part II of this thesis shows that in combination with the structural markers explored in Part I, the sagas employ the collective perspective of the general public, other characters and ‘irrational’ motivators such as fate to contribute to their techniques of characterisation. Because disruptive qualities speak inherently of a difference in the way an individual sees themselves and in the way the public sees them, or we as an audience are meant to see them, figures termed ójafnaðarmaðr are an ideal focal point for the development of this study.

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.

This thesis concerns narratives about Anglo-Scandinavian contact and literary traditions of Scandinavian origin which circulated in England in the post-conquest period. The argument of the thesis is that in the eleventh century, particularly during the reign of Cnut and his sons, literature was produced for a mixed Anglo-Danish audience which drew on shared cultural traditions, and that some elements of this largely oral literature can be traced in later English sources.  It is further argued that in certain parts of England, especially the East Midlands, an interest in Anglo-Scandinavian history continued for several centuries after the Viking Age and was manifested in the circulation of literary narratives dealing with Anglo-Scandinavian interaction, invasion and settlement.  The first chapter discusses some narratives about the reign of Cnut in later sources, including the Encomium Emmae Reginae, hagiographical texts by Goscelin and Osbern of Canterbury, and the Liber Eliensis; it is argued that they share certain thematic concerns with the literature known to have been produced at Cnut’s court.  The second chapter explores the literary reputation of the Danish Earl of Northumbria, Siward, and his son Waltheof in twelfth-century sources from the East Midlands and in thirteenth-century Norwegian and Icelandic histories.  The third chapter deals with an episode in the Middle English romance Guy of Warwick in which the hero helps to defeat a Danish invasion of England, and examines the romance’s references to a historical Danish right to rule in England.  The final chapter discusses the Middle English romance Havelok the Dane, and argues that the poet of Havelok, aware of the role of Danish settlement in the history of Lincolnshire, makes self-conscious use of stereotypes and literary tropes associated with Danes in order to offer an imaginative reconstruction of the history of Danish settlement in the area.

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.

La traduction portugaise de la version post-vulgate française de la Quête du Graal achevée vers la fin du XIIIe siècle et intitulée A Demanda do Santo Graal, offre un prisme intéressant pour saisir, en contexte et à travers les jeux de déplacements et de reconfiguration, l’imaginaire caractéristique du cycle Post-Vulgate, autrement difficilement accessible. La Demanda do Santo Graal permet de mieux comprendre l’imaginaire du roman français et d’accompagner son évolution en dehors de ses frontières linguistiques à une époque où le romancier n’est plus traducteur, mais devient lui-même une figure d’autorité. Ce travail consiste essentiellement à voir comment la Queste Post-Vulgate lue en parallèle avec la traduction/adaptation portugaise permet de comprendre l’évolution du roman vers la fin du Moyen Âge et la notion d’auteur en faisant la distinction entre le translateur, le créateur et le romancier dans le récit médiéval tout en faisant témoin de l’évolution de leur subjectivité littéraire du roman des origines à celui du Moyen Âge tardif. / The Portuguese translation of the Post-Vulgate Cycle completed towards the end of the 13th century and entitled A Demanda do Santo Graal offers an interesting prism to grasp, within the context and through a set of displacement and of reconfiguration, the characteristics of the Queste Post-Vulgate’s imagination, otherwise difficult to access. The Demanda do Santo Grail gives the reader access to the imagination of the Medieval French novel while tracing the different aspects of its evolution outside of its linguistic borders in an era where the writer is no longer a translator, but becomes an auctor. This work mainly shows how the Queste Post-Vulgate, read in conjunction with the Portuguese translation/adaptation, illustrates the evolution of the novel and the concept of author while distinguishing between the translator, the creator and the writer. This important distinction between the different representations of the writer during the medieval period allows one to understand their literary subjectivity in the narrative from the beginning to the end of the Middle Ages.

Bodies, Saracen Giants, and the Medieval Romance: Transgression, Difference, and Assimilation explore le traitement des corps de trois géants Sarasins dans les romances de Roland and Vernagu (c. 1330), Sir Beues of Hamtoun (c. 1330), et The Taill of Rauf Coilyear (c. 1513-42).Grâce à une étude de la représentation de ces trois géants Sarasin, la signification du corps humain au Moyen Age, et des pratiques de la Chrétienté an accord avec les discours et idéologies envers le Proche-Orient qui existaient dans l’Occident médiéval, ce mémoire de maîtrise juxtapose le géant Sarasin et le héros de la romance pour indiquer une similarité apparente entre leur deux corps et leur religion respective. La romance démontre avec hésitation un désir d’assimiler le géants Sarasin dans le code héroïque ainsi que dans la religion chrétienne, mais souvent rejette avec suspicion le corps du géant par sa mort sur le champ de bataille. Malgré sa mort ou son assimilation dans le code héroïque et la Chrétienté, le corps du géant Sarasin demeure toujours important dans le contexte de la Romance, puisqu’il contribue à la construction de l’identité du héros, de sa foi, et de sa société. / Bodies, Saracen Giants, and the Medieval Romance: Transgression, Difference, and Assimilation explores the treatment of the bodies of three Saracen giants in the romances of Roland and Vernagu (c. 1330), Sir Beues of Hamtoun (c. 1330), and The Taill of Rauf Coilyear (c. 1513-42). Through a study of the characterization of the three Saracen giants, the significance of the human body in the Middle Ages, and the practices of Christianity in accordance with the discourses and ideologies regarding the near East that existed in the medieval West, this thesis addresses how and why the romance constructs the giant as a physical marker of excess, deviance and evil. Using theories and criticisms of subjectivity and embodiment, this thesis juxtaposes the Saracen giant with the romance hero to underline an obvious similarity between the two bodies and their respective religions. The romance hesitantly demonstrates a desire to assimilate Saracen giants into the heroic code as well as the Christian religion, but it often distrustfully chooses to remove the giant body through its death in battle. Regardless of its death or assimilation into the heroic code and Christianity, the Saracen giant's body forever remains meaningful for the romance, as it always contributes to the construction of the romance hero's identity, faith and society.

Partant de la réputation naïve, colorée et digressive de La Conquête de Constantinople de Robert de Clari, ce mémoire propose une analyse méthodique de ce récit en prose vernaculaire de la quatrième croisade de façon à en circonscrire les moments de continuité et de rupture. En fonction de plusieurs facteurs, dont leurs formules d’introduction et de clôture, leur rapport au temps de la croisade, leur longueur relative ainsi que leur positionnement dans l’économie globale du texte, les épisodes divergents sont identifiés puis analysés en travaillant lestement avec trois caractéristiques fondamentales de la digression plutôt qu’avec une définition nucléaire du concept, ce qui permet de discerner des degrés de digressif et d’offrir un panorama nuancé de l’oeuvre. Afin d’adopter un regard plus large sur le phénomène de la digression, quatre autres récits de croisade sont étudiés, et tous, qu’ils soient écrits en prose ou en vers, en français ou en latin, sont à leur façon coupables de s’être laissés emporter par leur sujet dans des excursus qui trahissent la personnalité et les convictions de leur auteur. Tout comme Clari, Villehardouin, l’auteur de l’Estoire de la guerre sainte, Eudes de Deuil et Albert d’Aix laissent entrevoir leur propre histoire lorsque celle qu’ils mettent à l’écrit s’égare de la droite voie de sa narration. Les digressions contenues dans les récits de croisade constituent ainsi une fenêtre privilégiée sur l’histoire des mentalités du Moyen Âge central, une mine d’informations qui ne peut être adéquatement exploitée que par les efforts conjoints de l’histoire et de la littérature. / Taking the naïve, colorful and digressive reputation of Robert de Clari’s La Conquête de Constantinople as a starting point, this master’s thesis presents a methodical study of this vernacular prose account of the Fourth Crusade in order to determine where the narration flows and where it breaks. Divergent episodes are identified with respect to their introductory and closing formulas, their relationship to the time of the crusade, their relative length as well as their positioning in the general arrangement of the text. Based on a loose understanding of three characteristics that are fundamental to digression as opposed to an univocal definition of the concept, they are then analysed in terms of degrees of digressiveness, thus offering a nuanced picture of the work. To allow a broader outlook on the phenomenon of digression, four more crusade narratives are studied, and all of them, whether written in French or in Latin, in prose or in verse, are guilty of getting carried away by their subject in excursus that betray their author’s interests and personality. Just like Robert, Villehardouin, the author of the Estoire de la guerre sainte, Odo of Deuil and Albert of Aachen all let their own story supersede the one they are writing in those moments where the narration goes astray. The digressions found in crusade narratives are thus privileged access points to the history of high-medieval mentalities, a fertile field whose fruits must be harvested by the joint efforts of both history and literature.

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"Italian Readers of Ovid: From the Origins to Dante" studies the reception of Ovid's writings in medieval Italian prose and poetry, from the first vernacular poems composed in Sicily to Dante's "Divina Commedia." Starting from the very beginnings of a new literary culture, I show how the increasing availability of Ovid's texts is mirrored in the increasing textual presence of Ovid in the vernacular writings of the period. Identifying the general traits common to this Ovid-inspired literature, I discuss how medieval Italian authors used Ovid's works and his characters to address questions of poetics, openly debating the value of Ovid's poetry for their own writings. I then illustrate how, in his lyric poetry and the "Commedia," Dante inserts himself into this vernacular practice of discussing poetics through the medium of Ovid. Ultimately, I argue that Dante's reading of Ovid in the "Commedia" is deeply rooted in his own lyric poetry and that of his predecessors. Chapter 1, "Medieval Italian Readers of Ovid, Modern Readers of Reception," describes the material and cultural contexts of the reception of Ovid during the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in Italy, challenging existing notions about Ovid's reception in medieval Italian scholarship. Previous studies mostly treat Dante's "Commedia" as the starting point of this reception history, neglecting the preceding and equally important lyric tradition. Questioning this approach, I reconstruct the increasing availability of Ovid's works in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries in Italy and specify in which formats (commentaries, translations, anthologies, mentions in treatises, other works of literature) and contexts (schools, universities, courts, monasteries) contemporary readers could have encountered Ovid's works. By outlining these texts and contexts, I depict a growing community of Italian readers of Ovid, many of whom not only read Ovid but also incorporated the Latin poet's work in their writings. Chapter 2, "Readers Turned Writers: From the Sicilian School to the dolce stil novo," focuses on a first series of these Ovid-inspired Italian writings. This chapter explores the poetic implications of including Ovid in their works--a trait found in the poetry of Pier della Vigna, Guido Cavalcanti, and Guido Guinizzelli, among others. During this period, poets debate with their contemporaries about how to write poetry, openly addressing and even attacking fellow poets while defending their own poetics. The Italian poets explicitly evaluate their readings of Ovid's love poetry in their poems and single out his poetry as an emblem of the kind of poetry they write, or no longer wish to write. The vernacular poets treat Ovid's "Metamorphoses" similarly. By means of the simile, the Italian poets feature a select group of Ovidian characters to underline their own exceptionality: for example, the poet is similar to the male Ovidian character (but better), his lady to the female (but more beautiful). The third chapter, "Readers Turned Writers: Dante Alighieri and Cino da Pistoia," focuses on the exceptional position of Dante and Cino among this group of vernacular writers. Both Dante and Cino integrate Ovidian material in their poetry with more complexity. Including similes in their poetry, Dante and Cino radically revise this common practice by associating themselves with the female Ovidian character--a gender switch that later Petrarch will adopt. Both poets also go beyond comparing their world with that of the "Metamorphoses" (what all the vernacular poets discussed in Chapter 2 did), but truly integrate Ovidian material into their poetry, blending Ovid's world into theirs. Furthermore, this chapter challenges the notion of two phases of Dante's writing posed in Dante scholarship: one phase when he is exclusively interested in vernacular poetry, and the second phase when he turns to classical literature. Finding Ovid featured in one of Dante's earliest poem exchanges, I illustrate that it is precisely in his vernacular lyric poetry that Dante slowly starts to experiment with Ovidian material. The petrose, a series of four poems written around 1296, are central in this development. These poems test out some new techniques that Dante will use more frequently in the "Commedia": the integration of both central and peripheral elements from a larger passage in Ovid's text, and the combination of different Ovidian sources at the same time. Chapters 4 and 5 trace the development of these techniques from Dante's lyric poems to the "Commedia," where for the first time we encounter Ovidian material in a Christian context. While it is not my aim to de-allegorize Dante's reading of Ovid, I stress that the most radically allegorizing and Christianizing commentaries on Ovid are not part of the cultural context of Dante's time and, instead, illustrate how much Dante's reading of Ovid is rooted in the lyric tradition. Chapter 4, "Metapoetics in Ovid and Dante's Commedia," focuses on the role Ovid's writings play in Dante's definition of his poetics. Looking at metanarrative moments in the "Commedia" (Inf. 24-25, Purg. 24, the poetic invocations in Purg. 1 and Par. 1), I illustrate how Dante repeatedly discusses poetics through the medium of Ovid, just as the Italian lyric poets did. Chapter 5, "Shifting Shapes of Ovidian Intertextuality: Ovid's Influence in Purgatorio and Paradiso," proposes to categorize Ovidian allusions in the "Commedia" by the kinds of elements Dante drew from his Ovidian sources. The primary method with which Dante incorporates Ovidian material in the "Commedia" is the rhetorical trope of the simile, which was also repeatedly used by the vernacular lyric poets. Focusing on the Purgatorio and Paradiso, the two canticles where the poet compares himself most often with certain characters from the "Metamorphoses," I illustrate how Dante adopts and transforms this vernacular lyric practice. Of these vernacular poets, Dante is certainly the Italian reader of Ovid who integrates Ovidian material in his poetry most frequently and with the most complexity: he combines the methods of the vernacular lyric poets with other classical or theological sources and conforms these methods to the poetics of the "Commedia." But this complexity, I ultimately argue, can only be fully understood in connection within the cultural context of the reception of Ovid: an Italian literary culture that from its very beginnings reflects on Ovid's texts.

The Confessio Amantis, a poem completed in 1393, opens with its author's pledge to: wryte of newe som matiere essampled of these olde wyse [write anew some matter modeled on these old wise books]. Expressing a commonplace among writers of vernacular literature in late medieval England, John Gower describes authorial activity as the process of translating and assimilating pre-existing narratives. This dissertation argues that such conceptualizations of authorship were embraced by illuminators of vernacular literature in their burgeoning notion of invention before the ascendance of print: as translation and compilation provided a model of creativity founded on the alteration of models, illuminators located an ideal congenial to both the restrictions and freedoms of their own profession. The centerpiece of the study is Pierpont Morgan MS M. 126, a manuscript of the Confessio Amantis produced c.1472 and made for Edward IV and his Queen Consort, Elizabeth Woodville. Although it has been acclaimed as one of the most impressive extant manuscripts of Middle English literature, it has never been the subject of a major study. The aim of the dissertation is to recognize and restore to the illustrator the power of his position between the conception of a text and the consumption of a book. Part One focuses on the illustrator's interactions with the textual voices of the Confessio Amantis, demonstrating how the images in nineteen manuscripts of the poem, including the Morgan Confessio, address the identity of the author of the poem (Chapter One); and how miniatures in the Morgan Confessio reinterpret its Ovidian narratives (Chapter Two). Part Two shifts attention to the illustrator's confrontation with his patrons. Although their impact on the production of this manuscript appears to have been minimal, I observe how, as patrons they furnished a visual context for the Morgan Confessio from within their own library of illustrated historical manuscripts (Chapter Three) and books on science (Chapter Four). Produced just before Caxton printed his first book in Westminster in 1476 and standing at the threshold of standardization, this manuscript offers a complex glimpse into the variance that epitomized creative activity in illustrated vernacular manuscripts.