Traveling Companions: Narrative Diffusion of <em>Floire et Blancheflor</em> in Medieval Miscellany, 1325–1400
Tara Mendola
All models are wrong, but some useful.-George BoxThere three kinds of lies: lies, damned and statistics.-Mark TwainIntroductionIdentifying how a narrative travels from one place time to another, hence culture or community remains persistent problem in both folklore studies literary history. Often, the movement narratives must be triangulated approximated surviving evidence. For medieval period, such evidence is often scant difffijicult evaluate-of that survive written material at all, many those only handful manuscripts. This article contends when manuscript corpus found largely specifijic type manuscript-the vernacular anthology miscellany-one can use increased context provided by trace geographic temporal difffusion across communities see what companion travel with given story. Using foundational European tale Floire Blancheflor, I explore narrative's traveling companions its tell us about cultures through which it traveled.Floire Blancheflor fijirst appears record as twelfth-century Old French romance et Blancheflor. It possesses moderate number witnesses, so few render an outlier among narratives. Further, witnesses appear wide swath linguistic areas, twelfth fourteenth centuries. Ultimately, suggest four iterations for tale: (1) Berte Big Feet, Mainete; (2) Claris Laris; (3) Amadas Ydoine, Partonopeus Blois, (4) Blancandin Orgeuilleuse d'Amour, Blois. Viewing fundamentally tied these sets stories changes our understanding reception time.With rapidly increasing commercialization production over thirteenth century, bespoke manuscripts were increasingly available wealthy, secular public. While codices contained single text, now referred anthologies. great deal so-called miscellany are, fact, organized according principles ranging rudimentary groupings thematically related texts elaborate overall design (Huot 11). Who, exactly, was doing organizing open question; however, would have necessitated complex interaction between bookseller, scribe, patron. As culture, assembled not casually deliberately, result someone's decision should exist, common group made this fashion another (Rouse Rouse 3). intentionality does discount possibility seemingly random collections simply existed sake convenience, reader more than story hand. However, patterns association individual crop up repeatedly multiple manuscripts, we make begin hypothesize potential thematic, cultural, historic connections them.New Codicology1 values codex object inquiry rather corpus, treating each living artifact rich sites meaning (material, textual, historical). In scenario, book idiosyncratic individual, capable being parsed confronted whole. …
Narrative culture