Constantinople and the West in Medieval French Literature

Renewal and Utopia
Erscheinungsjahr 2012
ISBN: 978-1-84384-302-3
Verlag: Boydell & Brewer

Buch, Englisch, Band 25, 248 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 160 mm x 241 mm, Gewicht: 590 g

Reihe: Gallica

An indepth examination of the presentation of Constantinople and its complex relationship with the west in medieval French texts.

Medieval France saw Constantinople as something of a quintessential ideal city. Aspects of Byzantine life were imitated in and assimilated to the West in a movement of political and cultural renewal, but the Byzantine capital wasalso celebrated as the locus of a categorical and inimitable difference.
This book analyses the debate between renewal and utopia in Western attitudes to Constantinople as it evolved through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in a series of vernacular (Old French, Occitan and Franco-Italian) texts, including the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne, Girart de Roussillon, Partonopeus de Blois, the poetry of Rutebeuf, and the chronicles by Geoffroy de Villehardouin and Robert de Clari, both known as the Conquête de Constantinople. It establishes how the texts' representation of the West's relationship with Constantinople enacts this debate between renewal andutopia; demonstrates that analysis of this relationship can contribute to a discussion on the generic status of the texts themselves; and shows that the texts both react to the socio-cultural context in which they were produced, and fulfil a role within that context.

Dr Rima Devereaux is an independent scholar based in London.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Devereaux, Rima

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Europäische Literatur
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Romanische Literaturen Französische Literatur

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction
Making Sense of History: East-West Relations and the Idea of the City in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries
Renewal and Utopia: Two Paradigms for Understanding East-West Relations in Medieval French Texts
Aemulatio: The Limitations of East-West Alliance
Admiratio: Utopia as Social Critique
Translatio Embodied? Renewal, Truth and the Status of Constantinople in Thirteenth-Century Didactic Texts
Renovatio as Commemoration: Civic Loyalty and the Latin Empire of Constantinople as Venetian Historiography
Conclusion
Appendix 1: Original Latin Quotations
Appendix 2: References to Constantinople in Other Epics and Romances
Appendix 3: Outline of Events in the History of East-West Relations from the Second Crusade to the Palaeologan Reconquest
Bibliography