Image and imagination : picturing the Old French epic / Sandra Malicote.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Malicote, Sandra.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Chansons de geste--History and criticism.

Chansons de geste.

Epic poetry, French--History and criticism.

Epic poetry, French.

Illumination of books and manuscripts, Medieval--France.

Illumination of books and manuscripts, Medieval.

France.

Physical Description:

xxvi, 173 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Lanham : University Press of America, [2010]

Summary:

The first in-depth interdisciplinary study of word and image in the Old French chanson degeste, Image and Imagination: Picturing the Old French Epic examines the fascinating relationship between illumination and epic narrative constructed by the medieval understanding of the imagination. The study focuses on the epic cycle known as "the geste of Saint Gille," including Aiol and Elie de Saint Gille. The poems in manuscript were produced in the context of the opulent francophone Flemish courts of the mid-to-late thirteenth century. The manuscript (known as BNF fr 25516) is richly illuminated, and the study includes the popular Beuves de Hanstone, forerunner of Shakespeare's Hamlet, and the poem Robert le Diable, later becoming meyerbeer's celebrated opera. Concluding with the comparative study of BNF fr 24403's epic treatment of the only illuminated version of Chretien de Troyes' first Arthurian work, Erec et Enide, and the Sancti Bertini version of La Chevalerie Vivien, the first dated collection of epics made for a prominent northern Bishop, this study introduces the hitherto little-explored world of medieval illumination and epic narrative poetics.

Contents:

1 Aiol, Illumination and the Poetics of the Epic 1

2 The Illuminated Geste de Saint Gille, Pictor and the Past 32

3 Parody, Illumination and Genre Renewal 50

4 Roman, Estoire, Exemplum: Illumination of Epic Compilation 67

5 Illuminating the Old French Epic: Two Late Thirteenth-Century Franco-Flemish Examples 93.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0761848320

9780761848325

9780761848332

0761848339

OCLC:

443095566