The naked man : the transmission of knowledge in the works of Rutebeuf and Richard de Fournival / Virginia King.

Format:

Book

Manuscript

Microformat

Thesis/Dissertation

Author/Creator:

King, Virginia.

Contributor:

Brownlee, Kevin, advisor.

University of Pennsylvania.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Penn dissertations--Comparative literature and literary theory.

Comparative literature and literary theory--Penn dissertations.

Local Subjects:

Penn dissertations--Comparative literature and literary theory.

Comparative literature and literary theory--Penn dissertations.

Physical Description:

vi, 268 pages ; 29 cm

Production:

1996.

Summary:

This thesis argues that the "courtly" Richard de Fournival and the "popular" Rutebeuf are similarly obsessed with how knowledge is transmitted, and with how responsible they, as authors, are in this transmission. Chapter 1 provides a socio-historical background to their works, such as explaining how exegetical trends begin to favor literal, historical readings over allegorical ones, thus increasing the importance of authorial intention and the author's choice of a literary style. Richard's and Rutebeuf's works accordingly attempt to reassure their audience by making use of traditional literary codes that assimilate the translatio studii conceived of by thirteenth-century literati. At the same time, however, these authors manipulate and combine these codes in such a way that they set into motion their own unique translationes which may disrupt unproblematic transmissions.

Chapters 2 and 4 examine, respectively, Richard's lyric poems and his prose Bestiaires, concentrating on the unusual relation of his poet-personas to singing and role-reversals between the poet-lover, beloved, Love and false lovers, which challenge the poet-personas' authority. Chapters 3 and 5 explore respectively Rutebeuf's didactic works and his poems of misfortune, and focus on the various strategies of the poet-persona which attempt to authorize his "honest" transmissions but also undermine them. These unstable poet-personas reflect these authors' ambivalence towards the epistemological role of language, memory, the body and the senses.

The figure of the naked man who appears in both Richard's Bestiaires and Rutebeuf's misfortune poems in particular signals the rupture of these works with traditional expectations and illustrates Richard's and Rutebeuf's authorial anxiety about their ability to successfully transmit knowledge. The naked man simultaneously represents the ideal poet figure stripped of literary artifice and recalls the exile from Eden. It is thus left to the reader to decide whether or not the process of transmitting knowledge is to be viewed as hopeful or as the doomed heritage of a fallen state; regardless, Richard's and Rutebeuf's writings illuminate the social and literary concerns of thirteenth-century Paris and the very survival of their works to the present day testifies to a successful translatio.

Notes:

Supervisor: Kevin Brownlee.

Thesis (Ph.D. in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory) -- University of Pennsylvania, 1996.

Includes bibliographical references.

Local Notes:

University Microfilms order no.: 97-12949.

OCLC:

187469352