Medieval France. An Encyclopedia

(Darren Dugan) #1

anonymous Manuel des péchés (ca. 1260) was likewise popular, but the need for a Latin
version was apparently not felt. Peter of Peckham’s Lumere as lais and Le secré des
secrés are also associated with this movement toward individual piety, and later Nicole
Bozon, author of eleven short saints’ lives, composed the heavily allegorical Char
d’orgueil and Passion written in quatrains of Alexandrine lines, the Proverbes de bon
enseignement in approximately octosyllabic couplets, a series of didactic Contes in prose,
sermons in verse, and a number of poems to the Blessed Virgin in a variety of meters.
Henry of Lancaster’s Seyntz medicines (1352), a lengthy prose allegory presenting the
Seven Deadly Sins as seven wounds each in need of a specific treatment, continues this
tradition, which culminates in Gower’s Mirour de l’omme (ca. 1376–79), a poem of some
30,000 octosyllabic lines detailing the corruption of the world and the way to reform
through the help of God and the intercession of the Blessed Virgin.
William MacBain
[See also: AMADAS ET Y DOINE; AMI ET AMILE; BENEDEIT; BENOÎT DE
SAINTE-MAURE; BOZON, NICOLE; FRENCH LANGUAGE; GEFFREI GAIMAR;
GUILLAUME LE MARÉCHAL, HISTOIRE DE; HISTORIOGRAPHY; HUE DE
ROTEIANDE; JEU D’ADAM; JORDAN FANTOSME; MARIE DE FRANCE; MORAL
TREATISES; PHILIPPE DE THAÜN; ROMANCE; SAINTS’ LIVES; WACE]
Blacker, Jean. The Faces of Time: Portrayal of the Past in Old French and Latin Historical
Narrative of the Anglo-Norman Regnum. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1994. [We are
indebted to Prof. Blacker for allowing access to her manuscript in advance of publication.]
Crane, Susan. Insular Romance: Politics, Faith, and Culture in Anglo-Norman and Middle English
Literature. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
Dean, Ruth J. “The Fair Field of Anglo-Norman: Recent Cultivation.” Medievalia et Humanistica
3(1973):279–97.
Harvey, Carol J. “The Anglo-Norman Courtly Lyric.” Journal of the Rocky Mountain Medieval and
Renaissance Association 7(1986):27–40.
Kibbee, Douglas A. For to Speake French Trewely: The French Language in England, 1000–1600:
Its Status, Description and Instruction. Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1991.
Legge, M.Dominica. Anglo-Norman in the Cloisters: The Influence of the Orders upon Anglo-
Norman Literature. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1950.
——. Anglo-Norman Literature and Its Background. Oxford: Clarendon, 1963.
Pope, Mildred K. From Latin to Modern French with Especial Consideradon of Anglo-Norman.
Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1934.
Stone, Louise W., and William Rothwell. Anglo-Norman Dictionary. London: Modern Humanities
Research Association, 1977–.
Vising, Johan. Anglo-Norman Language and Literature. London: Oxford University Press, 1923.
West, Constance B. Courtoisie in Anglo-Norman Literature. Oxford: Blackwell, 1938.
The Anglo-Norman Text Society has to date published forty-nine volumes in its regular series, and
ten volumes in the Plain Texts series. Oxford: Blackwell, 1945–75; London: Anglo-Norman
Text Society, 1976-.


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