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Thirty-five years ago Roland Barthes proclaimed the death of the Author. For medievalists no death has been more timely. The essays in this volume create a prism through which to understand medieval authorship as a process and the medieval author as an agency in the making.
List of contents
Introduction: Saint Marcel, Asthmatic and Martyr; V.Greene Authorial Relays: Continuing Chrestien's Conte du Graal; M.Bruckner D'un masque l'autre: les vicissitudes de l'auteur du roman au temps de Perceforest; A.Berthelot Borrowing, Citation, and Authorship in Gautier de Coinci's Miracles de Nostre Dame; M.Switten The Roman de la Rose as a Moebius Strip (On Interpretation); A.Leupin The Names of the Rose; S.G.Nichols Experiencing Self and Narrating Self in Medieval French Chronicles; S.Marnette Neutrality Affects: Froissart and the Practice of Historiographic Authorship; Z.Stahuljak Christine de Pizan's Status as Author in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Manuscript Miscellanies: The Evidence of Scribal Rubrics; K.Fresco Portraits d'auteurs a la fin du Moyen Age: Tombeaux en majeste et epitaphes carnavalesques; J.Cerquiglini-Toulet De face et de profil: le geste identitaire de l'auteur a la fin du Moyen Age; D.Bohler Medieval Bestsellers in the Age of Printing: Melusine and Olivier de Castille; A.Pairet What Happened to Medievalists after the Death of the Author?; V.Greene
About the author
VIRGINIE GREENE is Associate Professor of Medieval French Literature at Harvard, USA.
Summary
Thirty-five years ago Roland Barthes proclaimed the death of the Author. For medievalists no death has been more timely. The essays in this volume create a prism through which to understand medieval authorship as a process and the medieval author as an agency in the making.
Additional text
"There is an intriguing misfit between Barthes's claim that the authoris deadand medieval textsfor whom theauthor may never haveexisted. A dozen leading French medievalists reflect here on our desire nevertheless to recognize the authors of the works we read - or on their desire to be recognized by us.Some essays address the play of authorial singularity and multiplicity; others the interplay between effacement and self-staging; yet others thegenesis of the medieval text. Greene's nuanced opening and closing remarksmaintain focus and pacein this excellent and diversevolume." - Sarah Kay, Princeton University
"This provocative collection of essays explores authorial agency in a variety of medieval French texts from the twelfth through sixteenth centuries. Contributors argue for the ways in which authorial identity is debated, contested, and constructed through the reuse and continuation of earlier texts, through contradiction and even violence, and through claims to authority, neutrality, and truth. This extended interrogation of medieval authorship offers important new understandings of medieval literary practices and of the textual negotiations that define the medieval author." - Peggy McCracken, University of Michigan
Report
"There is an intriguing misfit between Barthes's claim that the authoris deadand medieval textsfor whom theauthor may never haveexisted. A dozen leading French medievalists reflect here on our desire nevertheless to recognize the authors of the works we read - or on their desire to be recognized by us.Some essays address the play of authorial singularity and multiplicity; others the interplay between effacement and self-staging; yet others thegenesis of the medieval text. Greene's nuanced opening and closing remarksmaintain focus and pacein this excellent and diversevolume." - Sarah Kay, Princeton University
"This provocative collection of essays explores authorial agency in a variety of medieval French texts from the twelfth through sixteenth centuries. Contributors argue for the ways in which authorial identity is debated, contested, and constructed through the reuse and continuation of earlier texts, through contradiction and even violence, and through claims to authority, neutrality, and truth. This extended interrogation of medieval authorship offers important new understandings of medieval literary practices and of the textual negotiations that define the medieval author." - Peggy McCracken, University of Michigan
