Telling the Story in the Middle Ages: Essays in Honor of Evelyn Birge Vitz

Description

The storyteller stands at the crossroads of orality and performance, surrounded by a circle of rapt listeners. Evelyn Birge Vitz has challenged a generation of scholars to join the circle, listen as they read, and exchange pen for performance. A tribute to her work, the fifteen essays in this volume attend to the qualities of voice, their registers and dynamics, whether practiced or impromptu, falsified, overlapping, interrupted or whispered. They examine how the book became a performance venue and reshaped the storyteller's image and authority, and they investigate the mutability of stories that move from book to book, place to place and among competing cultures to stimulate cultural and political change. They show storytelling as far more than entertainment, but central to law, religious ritual and teaching, as well as the primary mode of delivering news. Themes that crisscross the volume include tension samong amateurs and professionals, dominant and minority languages and cultures, women and children's engagement with storytelling, animality, religion, translation, travel, didacticism and entertainment. List of Illustrations ix List of Contributors xi Evelyn 'Timmie' Birge Vitz, Bibliography xiii Introduction / Kathryn A. Duys, Elizabeth Emery, Laurie Postlewate 1 Part I: Speaking of Stories 'Of Aunters They Began to Tell': Informal Story in Medieval England and Modern America / Linda Marie Zaerr 13 The Storyteller’s Verbal 'jonglerie' in 'Renart jongleur' / Marilyn Lawrence 31 'Plusurs en ai oïz conter': Performance and the Dramatic Poetics of Voice in the 'lais' of Marie de France / Simonetta Cochis 47 Who Tells the Stories of Poetry? Villon and his Readers / Nancy Freeman Regalado 61 Part II: Inscribing Stories The Audience in the Story: Novices Respond to History in Gautier de Coinci’s 'Chasteé as nonains' / Kathryn A. Duys 77 Effet de parlé and effet d’écrit: The Authorial Strategies of Medieval French Historians / Cristian Bratu 93 'Or, entendez'! Jacques Tahureau and the Staging of the Storytelling Scene in Early Modern France / Kathleen Loysen 111 Telling the Story of the Christ Child: Text and Image in Two Fourteenth-Century Manuscripts / Maureen Boulton 123 Authorizing the Story: Guillaume de Machaut as Doctor of Love / Joyce Coleman 141 Part III: Moving Stories Retelling the Story: Intertextuality, Sacred and Profane, in the Late Roman Legend of St. Eugenia / E. Gordon Whatley 157 'Ruodlieb' and Romance in Latin: Audience and Authorship / Elizabeth Archibald 171 'Turner a pru': Conversion and Translation in the 'Vie de seint Clement' / Laurie Postlewate 187 Stories for the King: Narration and Authority in the 'Crusade Compilation' of Philippe VI of France (London, British Library, MS Royal 19.D.i) / Mark Cruse 205 'Le Berceau de la littérature française': Medieval Literature as Storytelling in Nineteenth-Century France / Elizabeth Emery 219 Storytelling Tribute: An Ode to Friendship Retelling the Old Story / Samuel N. Rosenberg 239 Index 245 Tabula Gratulatoria 261