Patronage of the poetic Mélusine romance: Guillaume l’Archevêque’s confrontation with dynastic crisis

In 1400 Guillaume l’Archevêque, the lord of Parthenay, commissioned the Roman de Parthenay (RP), a poetic ancestral romance affirming his family’s descent from Mélusine, the mythic fairy-serpentine matriarch of the Poitevin Lusignan dynasty. Prevailing scholarship holds that Guillaume’s commission was a political response to the earlier patronage of a prose Mélusine romance by Jean, duke of Berry, c. 1392. According to this view, Guillaume was an English partisan who sought to counter the French claims to Poitevin territories embedded in Berry’s romance with a text that proclaimed his own (and therefore English) rights to lands in central France. After exploring textual and historical evidence for this conventional view, the paper argues that clues to understanding Guillaume’s patronage lie in an analytical comparison of passages in the RP with the specific dynastic circumstances confronting l’Archevêque at the end of the fourteenth century. Examination of the romance in conjunction with evidence provided by feudal, financial, and legal sources suggests that Guillaume’s literary patronage was motivated not by contemporary affairs of state but by his anxieties about the imminent extinction of the Parthenay dynasty.     

The darkness and claustrophobia of the city: Victor Hugo and the myth of Paris

Dark, mysterious, and dangerous: The representation of Paris in 19thcentury French literature contrasts sharply with the ideals and expectations of a society that dreamt of progress and modernity. Through his symbolism, Victor Hugo recaptures the dark side of Balzac's Paris, and turns the capital into a gigantic spider's web that symbolises the power of Fate upon individuals, and underlines the carceral oppression of the city. In this article, a reading is proposed of some of Hugo's major prose (Notre-Dame de Paris , Les Misérables) illustrating his claustrophobia: Paris, the capital of 'materiality', is represented metaphorically in Hugo's writings as a huge prison, and ultimately as a dreadful monster, swallowing and literally digesting its prey. This image of Paris connects Hugo's work to that of several other major 19th-century French writers, notably Balzac, Zola and-less obviously-Baudelaire.     

法国早期象征派诗歌的生命意识

19世纪的法国象征派运动,给浪漫主义以来的欧洲诗坛带来一股清新的诗风。对于象征派诗歌的把握,有一个核心的精神,那就是寻求同万物生命的对话。从波德莱尔的“感应”,到兰波的“通灵”,再到马拉美的“无限”,法国象征派诗歌建立一种完全不同于人类中心论的全新的生命意识,对后世的后期象征主义文学甚至是生态文学都产生了深远的影响。     

Notice to contributors

In 1400 Guillaume l’Archevêque, the lord of Parthenay, commissioned the Roman de Parthenay (RP), a poetic ancestral romance affirming his family’s descent from Mélusine, the mythic fairy-serpentine matriarch of the Poitevin Lusignan dynasty. Prevailing scholarship holds that Guillaume’s commission was a political response to the earlier patronage of a prose Mélusine romance by Jean, duke of Berry, c. 1392. According to this view, Guillaume was an English partisan who sought to counter the French claims to Poitevin territories embedded in Berry’s romance with a text that proclaimed his own (and therefore English) rights to lands in central France. After exploring textual and historical evidence for this conventional view, the paper argues that clues to understanding Guillaume’s patronage lie in an analytical comparison of passages in the RP with the specific dynastic circumstances confronting l’Archevêque at the end of the fourteenth century. Examination of the romance in conjunction with evidence provided by feudal, financial, and legal sources suggests that Guillaume’s literary patronage was motivated not by contemporary affairs of state but by his anxieties about the imminent extinction of the Parthenay dynasty.     

Pseudo-Turpin,the crisis of the aristocracy and the beginnings of vernacular historiography in France

The opening decades of the thirteenth century witnessed the birth of historical writing in Old French prose, marking a decisive evolution in the historical tastes of the lay aristocracy, whose interest in the past had until then been satisfied by chanted verse histories and chansons de geste. The earliest products of the movement toward vernacular prose historiography were the first translations of the Pseudo-Turpin chronicle, of which no fewer than six independent versions were made within the confines of the French realm between 1200 and 1230. The translation of Pseudo-Turpin, and with it the creation of vernacular prose historiography, was the work of a small group of Franco-Flemish lords circulating in the orbit of the count of Flanders. This extreme chronological and geographical concentration suggests that vernacular historiography in general, and Pseudo-Turpin in particular, addressed itself with special urgency to the needs of the French aristocracy at a moment of crisis and that historiographical innovation was, at least in part, a response to changes taking place in the social and political conditions of noble life experienced at that moment.The substitution of prose for verse, and of history for legend, would seem to be the product of an ideological initiative on the part of the French aristocracy, whose social dominance in French society was being contested by the rise of royal power during the very period which witnessed the birth of vernacular prose historiography. By appropriating the inherent authority of Latin texts and by adapting prose for the historicization of aristocratic literary language, vernacular prose history emerges as a literature of fact, integrating on a literary level the historical experience and expressive language proper to the aristocracy. No longer the expression of a shared, collective image of the community's social past, vernacular prose history becomes instead a partisan record intended to serve the interests of a particular social group and inscribes, in the very nature of its linguistic code, a partisan and ideologically motivated assertion of the aristocracy's place and prestige in medieval society.     

The Symbol of Orpheus in the Sturm und Drang Period

The handling of gender in the Old French Roman de Silence has caused considerable scholarly conflict because the poem simultaneously endorses two competing and mutually irreconcilable gender ideologies. Asserting that gender is essential and its boundaries inviolate—even as its eponymous heroine freely crosses gender boundaries to become supremely successful in male roles—the poem creates a radically unstable conception of gender that has implications not only for its portrayal of social gender roles but also for its use of gendered language. The heroine's name, Silence, becomes emblematic of language's inability to fully represent its subject, as neither Latin nor the vernacular proves adequate to the task of depicting an ambiguously or multiply gendered character. Gendered language and gendered behavior emerge as mutually dependent sources of paradox that point to the limitations of both language and narrative.     

Die Komnenen und die Kaiserkrone des westens

The opening decades of the thirteenth century witnessed the birth of historical writing in Old French prose, marking a decisive evolution in the historical tastes of the lay aristocracy, whose interest in the past had until then been satisfied by chanted verse histories and chansons de geste. The earliest products of the movement toward vernacular prose historiography were the first translations of the Pseudo-Turpin chronicle, of which no fewer than six independent versions were made within the confines of the French realm between 1200 and 1230. The translation of Pseudo-Turpin, and with it the creation of vernacular prose historiography, was the work of a small group of Franco-Flemish lords circulating in the orbit of the count of Flanders. This extreme chronological and geographical concentration suggests that vernacular historiography in general, and Pseudo-Turpin in particular, addressed itself with special urgency to the needs of the French aristocracy at a moment of crisis and that historiographical innovation was, at least in part, a response to changes taking place in the social and political conditions of noble life experienced at that moment. The substitution of prose for verse, and of history for legend, would seem to be the product of an ideological initiative on the part of the French aristocracy, whose social dominance in French society was being contested by the rise of royal power during the very period which witnessed the birth of vernacular prose historiography. By appropriating the inherent authority of Latin texts and by adapting prose for the historicization of aristocratic literary language, vernacular prose history emerges as a literature of fact, integrating on a literary level the historical experience and expressive language proper to the aristocracy. No longer the expression of a shared, collective image of the community's social past, vernacular prose history becomes instead a partisan record intended to serve the interests of a particular social group and inscribes, in the very nature of its linguistic code, a partisan and ideologically motivated assertion of the aristocracy's place and prestige in medieval society.     

Between Discourse and Experience: Agency and Ideas in the French Pre‐Revolution

Experience has recently reemerged as an important analytical category for historians of the Old Regime and the French Revolution. Reacting against the perceived excesses of discourse analysis, which made political language independent of any social determinants, certain post‐revisionists are now seeking to contextualize political language by relating it to the experience of those who use it. Political agency, in these analyses, is understood to be the effect of particular formative experiences. This article suggests that the search for an experiential antidote to discourse is misconceived because it perpetuates an untenable dichotomy between thought and reality. Access to the phenomenon of historical agency should be pursued not through experience or discourse but through the category of consciousness, since the make‐up of the subject’s consciousness determines how he/she engages the world and decides to attempt changing it. After a brief discussion of an important study that exemplifies both the allure and the functionality of the notion of experience, Timothy Tackett’s Becoming a Revolutionary, the article focuses on the evolving political consciousness of a man who became a revolutionary agitator in 1789, J.‐M.‐A. Servan. Analysis of his writings between 1770 and 1789 shows that the way in which his perspective was constructed, rather than the lessons of experience per se, determined the shape of his revolutionary intentions in 1789.     

理解革命发生学的新路径和新视阈——18世纪法国的政治、话语和公众舆论研究

早在旧制度末期,法国启蒙精英阶层就已意识到公众舆论在当时政治与社会中的重要影响。19世纪以来,史学家们也在不断地谈论旧制度末期的社会精神或公众舆论,希图从中找出革命的精神源流。但直到20世纪80年代左右,法国旧制度末期的公众舆论才成为史学家专门关注的对象。西方学者或追踪政治话语的变化,或关注民众的日常言论,或研究旧制度下的公共交往机制,以把握该时期法国社会集体政治意识的转变状况。     

The Social and Literary Context of German Translations of Saʿdi’s Golestān

Sa?di’s Golestān has been translated into German numerous times since the seventeenth century. The purpose of this article is to examine the social and literary context of three German translations and translators: Karl Heinrich Graf, a theologian and researcher of the Old Testament, published his translation of the Golestān in 1846 during German Romanticism; Dieter Bellmann, a professor of Oriental studies, published a revision of Graf’s Rosengarten in 1982 in the German Democratic Republic, where literature was strictly regulated; Kathleen Göpel published her indirect translation from English, prepared by the Afghan translator Omar Ali-Shah, in 1997, at a time of intercultural literature, also called “bridge literature.” Through examples the article shows how the context may have influenced their translations and how the text has changed when traveling across linguistic and cultural borders.     

Donald Bán and the Bócan

Although ATU 510A, ‘Cinderella’, is known to have ancient origins, it was widely thought that the ash-name did not become a feature of the tale type until Giambattista Basile’s ‘La Gatta cenerentola’ (The Ashy Cat) in the seventeenth century. However, it is preceded in this regard by a little-known fourteenth-century Icelandic romance, Vilmundar saga viðutan (The Saga of Vilmundr the Outsider). Using this saga as a starting point, this article traces the literary transmission of ATU 510A through the extant corpus of Old Norse literature, with particular reference to the development of three key aspects of ‘Cinderella’: the persecuted heroine; the lost-and-found shoe; and the cinder-name.     

The myth and the stones of Venice: an historical geography of a symbolic landscape

John Ruskin's Stones of Venice criticized the Victorian city and Victorian society in the light of a reconstruction of medieval Venice. But Ruskin's reconstruction embodied elements of a long-standing myth propagated by Venetians themselves and inscribed in their organization of urban space and urban landscape. The geographical dimensions of the myth, its changing character through time, its iconographic expressions and its significance for English attitudes to Venice are described and explained. Ruskin used the myth to support his ideology, constructing a homology between architectural development and social structure. But the appeal of Venice transcends historical contingency and may, in part, be understood by reference to psychoanalytic categories, specifically sexual symbolism.     

Home thoughts of abroad: Ohthere’s Voyage in its Anglo‐Saxon context

The Old English text known as Ohthere’s Voyage is regarded as a key source for Norwegian history. Consequently, the context of its composition and inclusion in the Old English Orosius has often been overlooked. This article demonstrates that the text cannot be separated from the processes that shaped it during its early transmission. Continental geographical traditions of the peoples of the north governed the preconceptions of Ohthere’s audience. Furthermore, the individual who included the account in the Orosius edited the latter text to anticipate it and tailored the sailor’s account to support the West Saxon ideological underpinnings of its new context.     

The role of charity in public relief, 1708–1871: Copenhagen as case

This article explores when and why charity vanished from public relief in Copenhagen and thereby differentiates itself from the traditional research field on welfare that focuses on studying the growth of taxation and social spending in the 19th century. This article reveals that charity was not solely a transfer of financial resources, but that charitable donations also entailed a cultural symbolism, which implied that charity was meant to support the local worthy poor. When the function of public relief underwent a transformation, especially at the beginning of the 19th century, the cultural symbolism of charity became incompatible with public relief. After the 1830s, the inhabitants of Copenhagen ceased to donate to public relief and instead donated charity to private philanthropy, which usually targeted the worthy poor for its help.     

The foundations of modern political thought

This paper aims at setting Montesquieu's 1729 sojourn in the Dutch Republic within its specific Dutch context whilst reconsidering the impact this short period may have exerted on his work. Based on a wide variety of Dutch, English and French sources, the article offers a study of Montesquieu's Dutch networks and contacts, a comparative Franco-Dutch approach to taxation and fiscal policy and an insight into the history of the stadholderate under William IV. The main argument made in the paper is two-fold: first, that the Dutch Republic was a mirror Montesquieu held up to the French monarchy, allowing him to put a number of ideas of government to the test; secondly that, owing to the fluctuating nature of Dutch political events between 1729 and 1748, the Dutch model remained somewhat elusive in Montesquieu's broader understanding of the paradigm of republican regimes.     

Pure and impure gestes: the generation of history in Jean d’Outremeuse's Myreur des histors

ABSTRACT

Scholars have long debated the place in medieval historiography of Jean d’Outremeuse's Myreur des histors, a universal history in celebration of Liège written in French around 1399. The abundance of Old French epic material in a chronicle that, according to its author, contained translations of only Latin sources, was once a source of outrage. The Myreur now holds significant interest, however, for its evidence of late medieval narrative strategies. This study demonstrates the Myreur's deliberate adaptation of epic material to glorify Liège. The author reimagines the Carolingian past as a source for future historical narratives by knowingly altering the genealogical framework of the chanson de geste universe. Carrying tales of sexual impurity, he describes the demise of the Carolingian line and transforms figures from epic to function within his linear history. This inventive approach allowed him to create a new hero- and history-generating lineage for his universal history.     

The Shifting Ideological Currents of the Transatlantic Puritan Community in the Early Seventeenth Century

This article explores the ideological transfigurations which appeared when English Puritans relocated to New England. It does so by examining particular communications which took place between the Puritans of the “Great Migration” of the 1630s and their erstwhile associates in “Old” England. Though both sets of Puritans had seemingly much in common when they were ideological allies back in Old England, not least being an antipathy towards the Laudian ecclesiastical establishment of the late 1620s and 1630s, the movement to the colonial periphery of New England exposed previously unnoticed, or, at least, overlooked, ideological divisions. This article explicates one significant ideological issue upon which these Old and New England Puritans were divided: that of the appropriate relationship between the civil and ecclesiastical spheres of the polity.     

Persian Monshi,Persian Jones: English Translations of Saʿdi’s Golestān from the Late Eighteenth to the Mid-Nineteenth Centuries

From the seventeenth century, Mosleh al-Din Sa?di Shirazi (d. 1291), a key figure in Persian classical literature, became the center of Europeans’ attention: his name appeared in travelogues and periodicals, and selections of his tales were published in miscellaneous Latin, German, French, and English works. To follow Sa?di’s impact on English literature, one needs to search for the beginning of the “Sa?di trend” and the reasons that led to the acceleration of the translation process of his works into the English language in the nineteenth century. This article examines the role of the British educational institutions in colonial India in the introduction of Sa?di and his Golestān to the English readership, and, in parallel, it uncovers the role of the Indo-Persian native scholars (monshis) who were involved in the preparation of translations. The article discusses how the perception of the British towards Sa?di’s literature developed in the first half of the nineteenth century and how their approach towards the translation of the “text” and its “style” evolved in the complete renderings of the Golestān.