This study focuses on the literary subgenre of Mirrors for Princes. A number of twelfth-century works from three genres of Old French literature are examined in order to ascertain what forms any didacticism takes, and whether the texts can be read as Mirrors for Princes. The three genres studied are epic, romance and pseudo-historical chronicle. From epic, I discuss La Chanson de Roland, Le Voyage de Charlemagne, La Chançun de Willame and Le Couronnement de Louis. Chrétien de Troyes forms the study of Mirrors for Princes in romance, and for pseudo-historical chronicle I examine Wace’s Roman de Brut. The didacticism present in the studied texts assumes two forms. The first is direct didacticism, in which the narrator or a character portrays an instruction or moral lesson through “speech”. This gives extra emphasis to the message, whether addressed directly to the audience or to another character within the narrative. The second form is indirect didacticism, which is more common in these texts. It consists of exemplary characters, their actions, behaviour and reputations. The Mirrors for Princes aspects of these texts provide not only examples of successful kings, but also of excellent vassals and queens. The mirrors for the women involve virtuous characteristics, where they fulfil their wifely and noble duties. They are addressed to regents and queens consort more so than to queens regnant, who were uncommon figures in the twelfth century. As well as providing examples and lessons on what is optimal behaviour for the ruling class, there are characters who supply examples of behaviour that is to be avoided. With these ignoble characters, common methods of transmitting the didactic messages are through their lasting reputation, the consequences of their actions, or the nature of their deaths. The study concludes that the examined texts can be read as Mirrors for Princes, despite most of them not being originally conceived as belonging to this subgenre. Lessons for vassals, noblemen and noblewomen, queens and kings are present to varying extents throughout these works using both forms of didacticism outlined above.

Master of Arts / Department of Modern Languages / Robert L. Clark / Medieval French literature provides the modern researcher with references to the healing arts in many passages that are incorporated into prose or poetic works. Because there was no clear separation of the genres into modern classifications, references to treatment of sicknesses of body, mind or spirit are woven into many literary works, providing us with a kind of snapshot of the state of the art healing practices of the day. Texts make reference to herbs and plants used to cure the ailments of the body, gardens and flowers that refresh the spirit, miraculous unguents, cures through the intercession of the saints and the Virgin Mary and surgical procedures. Texts examined here include Le Roman de la Rose, Erec et Enide, Aucassin et Nicolette, Les Lais of Marie de France, Le conte du Graal, Le chevalier de la charrette, La Condamnation de Banquet, Yvain, Cligès, La Chanson de Roland and Treize Miracles de Notre-Dame. The picture they provide of the medicine of the time has a certain charm and quaintness that many moderns seek in holistic treatments of today which hearken back to this more rustic medicine.

acase@tulane.edu / This study examines the Old French narrative lay from the perspectives of orality, performance, and reception. The Old French narrative lay is a short medieval genre often conflated with romance or with other short forms due to similar themes and/or structure. However, the medieval author had a variety of terms from which to choose; and connections can and should be drawn between texts that self-identify as one type or another. While the twelve lays of Marie de France have come to define the genre, many others do not conform to this standard. This study rejects the accepted notion of a static lay standard modeled on the works of Marie de France and instead seeks to reconstruct the medieval understanding of the genre over time by analyzing a later, non-standard example. Long considered a generic aberration, the lay of Lecheor appears to mock the genre by presenting a tale of courtly ladies who compose a song in praise of the uncourtly cunt. Yet of greater interest is its metatextual commentary on lay composition, performance, and reception, which serves as the framework for this study. Following an introduction to the lay in Chapter One, Chapter Two draws from Orality and Literary Studies to situate the lays in the context of writing as authority in Anglo-Norman Britain. Chapter Three transitions from orality as communication to orality as aesthetic, looking to oral theory and performance studies to explore performances in and of the lay. In Chapter Four, I turn to reception theory to justify the application of Lecheor’s troublesome view of courtly love to other lays and, by extension, romance. Each chapter addresses one or two lays that exemplify or challenge the schema provided by Lecheor. This intertextual analysis of the Old French narrative lay reveals a new “horizon of expectations” closer to that experienced by the contemporary reader and demonstrates that he or she was already aware of the literary concerns that these and other medieval texts continue to pose to modern scholars. In short, this study both reevaluates the genre and closes the perceived gap between medieval and modern receptions of the work. / 1 / Tamara Bentley Caudill

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This thesis investigates conceptual networks —systems of organising, understanding and explaining thought and knowledge— and the ways in which they underlie both text and its mise en page across a range of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century French and Catalan literary texts and their manuscript witnesses. Each of the three chapters explores a separate corpus of texts, using two of four interrelated network theories: Michel Serres’ notion of parasites and hosts as the basic interconnecting units that combine to constitute all relational networks; the ubiquitous organizational tree; Gilles Deleuze’s concept of the fold as the primary factor in producing differentiation and identity; and Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s unruly, anti-hierarchical and anti-arborescent rhizomatic systems. The first chapter engages primarily with parasites and trees; the second with trees and folds; and the third with folds and rhizomes. However, resonances with the other network theories are discussed as they occur, in order to demonstrate the fundamentally interconnected and often interchangeable nature of these systems. Each chapter includes close analysis of manuscript witnesses of the texts under discussion. The first chapter, ‘Saints Denis and Fanuel: Parasitism and Arborescence on the Manuscript Page’, examines parasitic and arboreal networks in two hagiographic texts: late thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century prose redactions of the Vie de Saint Denis, and the thirteenth‐century hagiographic romance Li Romanz de Saint Fanuel. The second chapter, ‘Ramon Llull’s Folding Forests: The World, the Tree and the Book’, addresses arborescent and folding structures in Llull’s encyclopaedic Arbre de ciència [Tree of Science], composed between 1295 and 1296. The third chapter, ‘Transgender Genealogy: Turning, Folding and Crossing Gender’, considers three characters in medieval French texts who can be read as transgender: Saint Fanuel; the King of Torelore in Aucassin et Nicolette; and Blanchandin/e in Tristan de Nanteuil. The chapter explores the ways in which these characters’ queer trajectories can be understood through conceptions of directionality which relate to the fold and the rhizome.

Although the works of Christine de Pizan have been of interest to scholars for some time, technological advances and initiatives to make digital copies of manuscripts available online have only recently enabled close comparisons between the visual programmes of her works to be made. This thesis demonstrates that detail usually considered secondary or 'paratextual' in Christine's manuscripts actually formed a carefully-constructed part of the work itself that Christine explicitly asks her audience to read. Through 'reading' the text and image simultaneously, the visual programme proves to comprise additional layers of meaning that were woven into her didactic works. These meanings can serve to supplement the educational and moral aims of the works, or, conversely, can be inconsistent with the message conveyed in the text, leading the reader-viewer to contemplate further on the matters presented and form their own opinions on them. Sometimes, meaning is created by intervisual connections with pre-existing iconography, such that viewers may be creating associations between the miniatures seen in Christine's manuscripts and other imagery, leading them to make certain associations - this is notably the case in author-portraits of Christine. As manuscripts prepared under the author's supervision came to be copied, changes were made to the iconographic programmes, testifying to and enabling different types of readings to take place. The findings of this thesis have implications for editorial practices of medieval works in general, as these tend to circulate in editions without the visual programme, providing modern readers with only a partial view of the complete work.