Poetry, Knowledge and Community in Late Medieval France

Reviews / Votes

This coherent and innovative collection of essays explores the development of the role of poetry as a vehicle for disseminating knowledge and creating community at a time when, paradoxically, prose was very much in the ascendant as the preferred literary form. * MODERN LANGUAGE REVIEW * This volume of essays . beautifully incarnates the very topics it takes as guiding threads to explore a wide variety of literary examples and expressions from the late thirteenth to the early sixteenth centuries. [...] This volume will no doubt continue to help revitalize interest in a period that has sometimes been seen as the neglected stepsister of the high Middle Ages and has now begun to take its rightful place in the history of French letters. * SPECULUM * Taken as a whole, this volume supplies an assortment of knowledgeable studies, and several chapters are strongly innovative. * H-FRANCE REVIEW * Thirteen essays, all lucidly written (ten in English, three in French), are characterised by acute textual analysis, sensitive consideration of literary form, and perspicacious examination of the material context of manuscript production and transmission. * FRENCH STUDIES * This tremendously rich and exciting volume, stemming from the AHRC 'Poetic Knowledge in Late Medieval France' project, compellingly fulfils its aim to establish 'the significant role played by poetry [...] in the culture of knowledge of late medieval France'. [...] This exemplary volume greatly expands and enriches scholarly horizons on the role of poetry in late medieval France. * FRENCH STUDIES * The thirteen essays in this volume provide a coherent and interesting overview of the role of knowledge and community in late medieval French poetic production, and will be welcomed by all working in the field as a valuable contribution to this growing area of scholarship. * OENACH 1.1 *