Poetry and Music in Medieval France
From Jean Renart to Guillaume de Machaut

This book, first published in 2003, examines the relationship between poetry and music in medieval France.

Ardis Butterfield (Author)

9780521100922, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 5 February 2009

400 pages, 24 b/w illus. 4 tables 18 music examples
22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm, 0.59 kg

Ardis Butterfield's book breaks new ground in challenging scholars to think anew not only about the development and interaction of French genres during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but also about the very definition of genre … It is a dense book, covering a broad corpus with a dizzying amount of detail …. Butterfield argues (with a leisurely and finely developed subtlety that is impossible to capture fully here) … Butterfield's illumination of how song and narrative changed from the thirteenth to the fourteenth century is innovative and compelling…like a medieval narrative the book repays more than one reading; its multitude of strands weaves a tapestry whose aspect changes from one viewing to the next. Butterfield's research has opened new doors of inquiry that are sure to reinvigorate our study of medieval French song. Journal of the American Musicological Society

In Poetry and Music in Medieval France, first published in 2003, Ardis Butterfield examines vernacular song in medieval France. She begins with the moment when French song first survives in writing in the early thirteenth century, and examines a large corpus of works which combine elements of narrative and song, as well as a range of genres which cross between different musical and literary categories. Emphasising the cosmopolitan artistic milieu of Arras, Butterfield describes the wide range of contexts in which secular songs were quoted and copied, including narrative romances, satires and love poems. She uses manuscript evidence to shed light on medieval perceptions of how music and poetry were composed and interpreted. The volume is well illustrated to demonstrate the rich visual culture of medieval French writing and music. This interdisciplinary study will be of interest to both literary and musical scholars of late medieval culture.

List of illustrations
List of tables
List of music examples
Acknowledgments
Bibliographical note
List of abbreviations
Prologue
Part I. Text and Performance: 1. Song and written record in the early thirteenth century
2. The sources of song: chansonniers, narratives, dance-song
3. The performance of song in Jean Renart's Rose
Part II. The Boundaries of Genre: 4. The refrain
5. Refrains in context: a case study
6. Contrafacta: from secular to sacred in Gautier de Coinci and later thirteenth-century writing
Part III. The Location of Culture: 7. 'Courtly' and 'popular' in the thirteenth century
8. Urban culture: Arras and the puys
9. The cultural contexts of Adam de la Halle
Part IV. Modes of Inscription: 10. Songs in writing: the evidence of the manuscripts
11. Chante/fable: Aucassin et Nicolette
12. Writing music, writing poetry: Le Roman de Fauvel in Paris BN fr. 146
Part V: Lyric and Narrative: 13. The two Roses: Machaut and the thirteenth century
14. Rewriting song: chanson, motet, salut, and dit
15. Citation and authorship from the thirteenth to the fourteenth century
Part VI. Envoy: The New Art: 16. The Formes fixes: from Adam de la Halle to Guillaume de Machaut
Epilogue
Glossary
Appendix
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: poetry & poets [DSC], Medieval & Renaissance music [c 1000 to c 1600 AVGC2]