DESCRIPTION OF PAPER IX:

EARLY TEXTS (MEDIEVAL PRESCRIBED TEXTS)

1. Course Content

This paper consists of the close study of three varied texts which illustrate some of the richness and variety of medieval French literature: the Chanson de Roland (ed. Ian Short, Lettres gothiques), whose unique text is found in the Bodleian Library, is a tale of military conflict, cultural confrontation, and moral anguish, whose poetry and searching profundity are perennially relevant; Béroul’s Tristran (ed. Philippe Walter, Lettres gothiques) tells the immortal story of doomed adulterous love in a narrative of bewitching subtlety; Villon’s Testament and Poésies diverses (ed. Claude Thiry, Lettres gothiques) recreate the complexity of life in the University and the back streets of Paris in the mid-fifteenth century from the vantage-point of the socially marginal criminal-poet.

2. Teaching

Faculty teaching is based on an annual cycle of lectures – six hours on each text, one in each of the three University terms. These are backed up by discussion seminars covering general problems and shorter runs of classes preparing for the commentary component of the examination. In addition, lectures (including podcasts) are offered on reading and translating Old French and on commentary writing. Students may also join in final-year medieval translation classes. A range of additional electronic resources are available on Weblearn. Your college will also arrange eight hours of tutorials in either your second or final year, covering the three texts.

3. Examination

In the three-hour examination paper, you will be asked to answer three questions, at least one of which must be taken from each section. All three set texts must be covered in these answers.

Section A: One passage for commentary from each of the set texts (in the case of Villon, the section of his work for special study is Le Testament, lines 1-909 and 1660-end), each passage including a number of lines to be translated into English.

Section B: Two essay questions on each of the set texts dealing with more general topics arising from your reading.

4. Introductory Reading

J. Gilbert, ‘The Chanson de Roland’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature, ed. S. Gaunt and S. Kay (Cambridge: CUP, 2008), pp. 21-34, available online via Solo

B. N. Sargent-Baur, ‘Accidental Symmetry: The First and Last Episodes of Béroul’s Roman de Tristan,’ Neophilologus 88.3 (2004), 335-51, available on the relevant section of Canvas)

A. Armstrong, ‘The Testament of François Villon’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval French Literature, pp. 63-76, available online via Solo.

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