̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - French literature

Conquering a continent: how the French language circulated in Britain and medieval Europe

sjr81 — Wed, 22 Jan 2014 11:36:40 +0000

An important manuscript of the Lancelot-Grail, it lay forgotten and unopened for five centuries until its rediscovery in North Yorkshire and its sale in 1944. Detailing the search for the Holy Grail, it goes on public display for the first time alongside the only existing fragment of an episode from the earliest-known version of the Tristan and Isolde legend. Also on display is an early example of the kind of guide familiar to thousands of today’s holiday-makers: a French phrasebook.

A free exhibition, ̽��ֱ��Moving Word: French Medieval Manuscripts in Cambridge, looks at the enormous cultural and historic impact of the French language upon life in England, Europe, the Middle East and beyond at a time when French – like Latin before it and English today – was the global language of culture, commerce and politics.

̽��ֱ��exhibition, curated by Bill Burgwinkle and Nicola Morato, is part of a wider AHRC-funded research project looking at the question of how knowledge travelled in manuscript form through the continent and into the Eastern Mediterranean world, freely crossing linguistic and cultural boundaries at a time when France was a much smaller political entity than it is today.

Burgwinkle, Professor of Medieval French and Occitan Literature at Cambridge, said: “French may have been brought to England by the Normans in 1066 but it was already here well before then as a language of knowledge and commerce. It served as the mother tongue of every English king for almost 400 years, from William the Conqueror to Richard II, and it was still in use as a language of royalty, politics and literature until the Tudor period, when we see Henry VIII writing love letters in French to Anne Boleyn.

“Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� is home to one of the world’s finest collections of medieval manuscripts of this kind. This exhibition not only gives us a chance to display the Library’s treasures, but also reminds us how the French language has enriched our cultural past and left us with a legacy that continues to be felt in 21st century Britain.

“Medieval texts like the ones we have on display became the basis of European literature. ̽��ֱ��idea that post-classical Western literature really begins with the Renaissance is completely false. It begins right here, among the very manuscripts and fragments in this exhibition. People may not realise it, but many of the earliest and most beautiful versions of the legends of Arthur, Lancelot and the Round Table were written in French; ̽��ֱ��Moving Word is a celebration of a period sometimes unfairly written out of literary history.”

̽��ֱ��early phrasebook, a guide to French conversation for travellers, is the Manières de language (1396). Composed in Bury St Edmunds and one of four in existence, it provides a series of dialogues for those travelling in France that inform readers how to trade with merchants, haggle over prices, secure an inn for the night, stop a child crying, speak endearingly to your lover or insult them. It also has instructions for singing the ‘most gracious and amorous’ love song in the world.

Elsewhere, perhaps some of the most impressive exhibits on display are huge medieval manuscripts that acted as compendiums of knowledge. One such example is a multilingual encyclopaedia from the 1300s featuring more than fifty texts of historical, cosmographical, literary and devotional interest. A heavily decorated volume, it is unusual for its thickness, and deals with, among other subjects, the roundness of the Earth and the force of gravity – centuries before Newton defined its laws.

In contrast, the fragment of Thomas d’Angleterre’s Roman de Tristan (Tristan and Iseut) may appear small in comparison, but its size belies its importance to the Cambridge collections. Thomas’s Tristan romance is the oldest known surviving version of the tragic love story. His work formed the basis of Gottfried von Strassburg’s German Tristan romance of the 13th century, which in turn provided the chief source for Wagner’s famous opera Tristan und Isolde. ̽��ֱ��fragment on display, detailing King Marc’s discovery of his wife Iseut and nephew Tristan sleeping together in a wood, is the sole witness of this scene from Thomas’s text to survive into the present.

̽��ֱ��Moving Word: French Medieval Manuscripts in Cambridge runs from January 22 to April 17, 2014, in the Milstein Exhibition Centre, Monday–Friday 09.00–18.00, Saturday 09.00–16.30 Sunday closed. Admission free. For further information, see https://exhibitions.lib.cam.ac.uk.

Inset images: Top, detail from a multilingual compendium of knowledge (UK, first half of 14th century). Bottom, detail from the breviary of Marie de Saint-Pol, Paris 1330-1340

A 13th-century manuscript of Arthurian legend once owned by the Knights Templar is one of the star attractions of a new exhibition opening today at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library.

̽��ֱ��idea that post-classical Western literature really begins with the Renaissance is completely false. It begins right here, among the very manuscripts and fragments in this exhibition.

Bill Burgwinkle

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Image from a 14th century manuscript of the Romance of the rose, one of the best-known texts of the Middle Ages

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution-Noncommerical

Le bon usage: using French correctly

bjb42 — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 00:00:00 +0000

In these globalised times, when international communication has taken some endangered languages to the point of extinction, it is fascinating to consider how one nation has resisted the encroachment of other languages in the interests of keeping its language pure.

̽��ֱ��French have long been keen advocates of linguistic correctness or ‘good usage’. Indeed, it is often said that France provides the most extreme example of a prescriptive, interventionist and purist attitude to use of language. Even today, ministerial commissions recommend acceptable terminology for fields as diverse as IT and nuclear energy, and the Académie française (the French language academy), advises on proper usage of French vocabulary and spelling, as it has done since the 17th century.

In a major research project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), Professor Wendy Ayres-Bennett is directing a collaborative project researching the origins of this concern for linguistic correctness and the broader symbolic values associated with it.

Remarks and observations

̽��ֱ��French preoccupation with language purity is reflected in the founding of the Académie française in 1635 and, perhaps above all, in the publication of a particular type of metalinguistic work. In 1647, Academy member Claude Favre de Vaugelas published hisRemarques sur la langue française, a collection of short, randomly ordered remarks and observations intended to resolve points of doubtful usage and provide clear guidance on the good use of French.

Vaugelas’s book quickly became a bestseller and was highly influential. We know, for instance, that in 1660 the great playwright Pierre Corneille reworked the language of his plays to take account of Vaugelas’s judgements and that Jean Racine, author of some of France’s finest tragedies, is said to have taken a copy of the work with him to the south of France so as not to become ‘contaminated’ by regional speech.

To understand the appeal and influence of such works in their day and beyond is to examine the social and cultural history of France. In a period of great social mobility, when nobility could be purchased by the newly rich, the volumes acted as a kind of linguistic courtesy book. Someone arriving new to the King’s court would need to know not only how to dress and eat properly, but perhaps above all how to speak correctly, so as not to offend polite society.

A rich resource

Many volumes of remarks and observations have been published by various authors down the centuries. All are typically intended not for foreigners but for competent native speakers who wish to perfect their usage of French.

These volumes provide the focus of the research project, which brings together scholars from North America, France and other parts of Europe to address key questions about the genre and to create a corpus of the principal texts, to be published online and as critical editions. This valuable research tool will provide those working on contemporary French with a historical perspective to their research: many of the most troublesome rules of French grammar used today, including past participle agreement, date from these early remarks on the French language. Moreover, one of the most fascinating aspects of the research is that the volumes of remarks provide unique data on how people actually wrote and spoke in the period.

̽��ֱ��writers of remarks continually strived to define what is French and to exclude the unwanted ‘other’, whether this is regional, low-register or foreign usage. Notions of language, nation and identity are thus closely intertwined. In short, to research the history of standardisation and linguistic correctness in France involves consideration of what it is to be French.

For more information, please contact the author Professor Wendy Ayres-Bennett (wmb1001@cam.ac.uk) at the Department of Linguistics.

̽��ֱ��purity and linguistic correctness of the French language has been closely guarded by the French for centuries. Professor Wendy Ayres-Bennett is exploring the reasons behind this national preoccupation.

Someone arriving new to the King’s court would need to know not only how to dress and eat properly, but perhaps above all how to speak correctly, so as not to offend polite society.

Wendy Ayres-Bennett

Frontispace of Vaugelas's Remarques sur la langue française (1647)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes

Rethinking eccentricity

bjb42 — Fri, 01 May 2009 00:00:00 +0000

Since the 18th century, English culture has been associated (both by the English themselves and by continental observers) with unusual tolerance towards unconventional and peculiar individuals. Even today, eccentricity is often seen as an obligatory component of the English national character. ̽��ֱ��eccentric is typically portrayed as a harmless and amiable figure, someone who provides others with a pleasant diversion from the tedium of everyday life.

But how historically representative are these received ideas of eccentricity? This question has formed the basis of my research and the subject of my recent book, which seeks to investigate more sceptically the cultural and ideological functions of eccentricity.

My research starts from two sets of assumptions: first, that eccentricity is neither timeless nor universal; second, that it is by no means always harmless and absurd. Eccentricity is, instead, a historically relative and context-dependent term, which must be situated within the broader histories of individualism and deviance. Eccentricity often elicited violent and conflicting responses, and was associated with potentially disturbing figures such as the insane, social marginals, human ‘monsters’ and the tempestuous Romantic genius. Beliefs about eccentricity varied widely across European national traditions, and were underpinned by complex assumptions about gender and class.

I chose 19th-century Paris as the focus of the study precisely because its culture was significantly different from English culture. ̽��ֱ��modern concept of eccentricity had crystallised in 18th-century England, a culture increasingly interested in poetic and psychological originality. Pre-Revolutionary French culture, by contrast, was markedly hostile to both originality and individual difference. It asserted that elegance was timeless, upheld rigid ideals of good taste and decorum, and stressed the need for social conformism. It was precisely the initial strength of French resistance to the values of eccentricity, I suggest, which make its reception after 1830 so revealing of tensions in French cultural identity.

Ambivalent emotions

Breaking with convention aroused highly ambivalent responses in 19th-century Parisian readers, writers and spectators. Eccentricity was debated in a wide range of sources, including etiquette manuals, fashion magazines, newspapers, novels, plays, political pamphlets, and scientific and psychiatric treatises. On the one hand, the scandal of ‘standing out’ evoked the aspirations of the bourgeoisie, namely its dreams of freedom, creativity and individuality. On the other, it symbolised the deepest anxieties of this class, the threat of madness, monstrosity and sin. Eccentricity was therefore simultaneously desired and feared, incorporated into and rejected from bourgeois identity.

Why were the French so ambivalent towards eccentricity? ̽��ֱ��French Revolution in 1789 inaugurated a century of unprecedented social and political instability, generating a strong desire in the French elite to create social cohesion and order. An orderly society entailed the suppression of any challenges to social norms. At the same time, however, the influence of Romanticism led to an increasing desire for individual freedom and fulfilment, whilst the bourgeoisie had strong faith in social and intellectual progress. ̽��ֱ��latter tendencies inevitably led to many norms and traditions being called into question, and 19th-century Parisian culture was at the forefront of attempts to probe the fragile boundaries between conformism and eccentricity. Three cultural fields in which this is most evident are fashion, bohemia and science.

Followers of fashion

Eccentricity in Paris of the 1830s was linked to flamboyant new fashions and the seductions of commodity culture. ̽��ֱ��values of fashion, including novelty and bizarreness, were diametrically at odds with the traditional values of French politeness and etiquette. Eccentric styles epitomised the intoxicating dangers of modernity, and were championed by a range of unconventional figures, including male and female dandies and the aristocratic figure of the lionne or lioness. ̽��ֱ��lionne rejected the fragility and hysteria associated with respectable women, and engaged instead in energetic ‘masculine’ pursuits such as horse-riding and smoking. But increasingly, such eccentricity was linked to demi-mondaines and courtesans, who, it was feared, were corrupting the morality and health of the social elite.

Bohemian culture

After Napoleon III’s coup d’état of 1851, the social position of the writer and artist became more problematic. Eccentricity was associated with the artists, social marginals and urban poor who inhabited ‘the unknown Paris’. This murky underworld fascinated bourgeois observers as much as it horrified them. Writers and journalists documented their ambivalent responses to exhibitions of human freaks in the fairground and to the half-mad visionaries of bohemian street culture. They were uneasily aware that they too failed to conform to bourgeois norms and that some eccentrics might be unrecognised geniuses.

Scientific theory

̽��ֱ��popularisation of medical theories of national decline after 1851 led to increasing moral panic. Eccentricity was interpreted as a symptom of insanity and concealed deformity, and eccentrics were often portrayed as a dangerous social menace which psychiatrists and legislators struggled to contain. Despite this, many writers, including Gérard de Nerval, Jules-Amédée Barbey d’Aurevilly, Charles Baudelaire and Jules Vallès, championed ‘pathological’ and ‘monstrous’ forms of eccentricity. Their writing constitutes an act of symbolic resistance to a culture which defined normality, virtue and health in increasingly restrictive and unimaginative terms.

A contemporary debate

In charting the history of eccentricity, one conclusion I arrived at was that beliefs about precisely how much individuals are permitted to diverge from social norms differ considerably between cultures in response to very specific socio-historical factors. Gender appears to be central to the imagination of deviance in this period since what was deeply eccentric for women was often considered quite normal for men, and vice versa. Ultimately, the experience of ambivalence is inseparable from European modernity: eccentricity represents one compelling set of values (novelty, freedom, individuality) which clashed significantly with other, equally compelling values (stability, order, community). In many ways, this type of clash is central to debates in contemporary moral and political philosophy about the plurality of values and goods.

̽��ֱ��interdisciplinary focus of the project continues to develop, as it traces the migration of concepts and metaphors between literature, popular culture and science. Continuing to emphasise the ways in which social and psychological categories are implicitly shaped by values and norms, my research is now focusing on a cultural history of paranoia and suspicion in French modernity.

For more information, please contact the author Dr Miranda Gill (mfg24@cam.ac.uk) at the Department of French, in the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages.

Miranda Gill traces shifting 19th-century perceptions of eccentricity, from its association with the intoxicating lure of modernity and fashion to the murky underworld of circus freaks and half-mad visionaries.

Eccentricity is, instead, a historically relative and context-dependent term, which must be situated within the broader histories of individualism and deviance.

by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library

Rethinking

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes

Montaigne moves to Cambridge

bjb42 — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 09:00:54 +0000

Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library has received an outstanding collection of books relating to Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), author of the celebrated Essais, who famously declared "I am myself the matter of my book."

̽��ֱ��Montaigne Library was assembled by the Montaigne scholar and financier Gilbert de Botton (1935–2000). Peter Fox, ̽��ֱ�� Librarian, explained: " ̽��ֱ��motivation behind Gilbert de Botton’s remarkable collection was the desire to recreate Montaigne’s library – by buying either Montaigne’s personal copies or other copies of works known to have belonged to him. He was able to purchase 10 of Montaigne’s own books."

Among the books is Montaigne’s copy of Lucretius’ De Rerum Natura (1563), an important influence on his life’s work. It is covered with Montaigne’s annotations, allowing scholars to trace in detail how he read and used his source. There is also a fine set of editions of Montaigne’s works, including copies owned by Ben Jonson and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and an impressive collection of secondary works, which means that Cambridge is now a major centre for Montaigne studies.

Philip Ford, Professor of French and Neo-Latin Literature at Cambridge, said, "Thanks to Gilbert de Botton’s passionate interest in Montaigne, future generations of Montaigne scholars will be able to share in his interest by consulting this magnificent collection in its new home in Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library." A monograph by Professor Ford, published by the ̽��ֱ�� Library, gives further information on the scope and content of the collection.

̽��ֱ��acquisition is marked by a conference of the French Department’s Cambridge French Colloquia in September 2008, devoted to the "Librairie de Montaigne", and an exhibition of items from the collection, 'My booke and my selfe': Michel de Montaigne 1533–1592’, which runs until 23 December 2008 at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library.

For more information, please contact Dr Jill Whitelock (jw330@cam.ac.uk), Head of Rare Books at Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library, or visit www.lib.cam.ac.uk/exhibitions/Montaigne

A magnificent new collection at the ̽��ֱ�� Library makes Cambridge a major international centre for Montaigne scholarship.

Thanks to Gilbert de Botton’s passionate interest in Montaigne, future generations of Montaigne scholars will be able to share in his interest by consulting this magnificent collection in its new home in Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Library.

Philip Ford

D'Arcy Norman from Flickr

Old Books 2

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Licence. If you use this content on your site please link back to this page.

Yes