ROTROUENGE
. A poetic form. Little is known regarding the rotrouenge, and the few extant examples
differ from one another in versification; yet the designation of a given song as a
rotrouenge often appears in the text, a fact that has led scholars to postulate that the
genre’s underlying formal structure is perhaps musical rather than textual. The text
consists of an indeterminate number of stanzas, two to eight lines each, with a one- to
two-line poststrophic refrain. The most representative rhyme scheme is aaa...
(b)+(A)B/(B)B.
Eglal Doss-Quinby
Bec, Pierre. “Note sur la rotrouenge médiévale.” In Mélanges de langues et de littératures romanes
offerts à Carl Theodor Gossen, ed. Germán Colón and Robert Kopp. 2 vols. Bern: Francke,
1976, Vol. 1, pp. 127–35.
Gennrich, Friedrich. Die altfranzösische Rotrouenge. Halle: Niemeyer, 1925.
ROUEN
. On the Seine between Paris and the English Channel, the city of Rouen (Seine-
Maritime) was the starting point of the medieval duchy of Normandy. During the late
Roman Empire, it had been the head of the secular and ecclesiastical province
Lugdunensis Secunda, and it remained an important port in the Frankish territory of
Neustria until Viking raids disrupted its political and religious life. Ceded to the Viking
chieftain Rollo ca. 911, Rouen was the base of his authority, and it served as the capital
of upper Normandy under Rollo’s heirs. The city prospered in the later 10th and 11th
centuries as a great trade center; the church, ruled by Rouen’s archbishop, regained its
former jurisdictional boundaries. The Norman conquest of England in 1066 added to
Rouen’s wealth. The following century witnessed the rise of its commune and other
bourgeois associations to protect common economic and judicial privileges.
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