Politics in Translation: Language, War, and Lyric Form in Francophone Europe, 1337-1400.
- Author/Editor
- Strakhov, Yelizaveta.
Strakhov, Elizaveta.
- Title
- Politics in Translation: Language, War, and Lyric Form in Francophone Europe, 1337-1400.
- Published
- Strakhov, Yelizaveta. Politics in Translation: Language, War, and Lyric Form in Francophone Europe, 1337-1400. University of Pennsylvania, 2014. ix, 339 pp. Dissertation Abstracts International A76.01(E). Fully accessible via ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global.
- Review
- From Strakhov's abstract: "The dissertation examines the so-called formes fixes,' an important lyric genre widely used across Francophone Europe in the late Middle Ages. It argues for this genre's emergence as a privileged medium for Francophone poets to explore the difficulty of retaining trans-European cultural affinity during the rise of protonationalist and regionalist faction in the Hundred Years War . . . . The dissertation organizes itself around a large, but little studied, late medieval manuscript anthology of 'formes fixes' lyric, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania, MS Codex 902 (formerly French 15). . . . the largest, oldest, and most formally and geographically diverse 'formes fixes' collection extant today. Chapter One argues that, unlike other, later, f'ormes fixes' anthologies, the Pennsylvania manuscript is not structured by author or sub-genre, but rather by form, chronology, geographic diversity, and dialectal difference . . . , reveal[ing] not only its compiler's awareness of the diffusion of 'formes fixes' lyric, but a desire to memorialize this genre's transmission across regional divides. Chapter Two explores the political effects of the diffusion of 'formes fixes' lyric by mapping literary borrowings between a corpus of anti-war texts in this anthology and other lyric corpora written in France, England, and the Low Countries. Chapter Three focuses on Francophone responses, both positive and negative, to the transmission of 'formes fixes' lyric into England, centering on the implications of Eustache Deschamps' praise of his English Francophone contemporary, Geoffrey Chaucer, as a 'great translator' of 'formes fixes' lyric. Chapter Four examines the adoption of 'formes fixes lyric in the work of Chaucer and . . . John Gower. It demonstrates that, like their Continental counterparts, Chaucer and Gower also view the appropriation of 'formes fixes' lyric as a means of carving a geopolitically specific identity out of Francophone cultural belonging" (vi-vii), focusing on Chaucer’s Prologue to the "Legend of Good Women" and Gower’s "Traitié selonc les auctours pour essampler les amantz marietz," with commentary on Gower's multi-lingualism elsewhere in his corpus.
- Date
- 2014
- Gower Subjects
- Traitié pour Essampler les Amants Marietz
Background and General Criticism
Style, Rhetoric, and Versification
Language and Word Studies