In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Reviewed by:
  • Miraculous Rhymes: The Writing of Gautier de Coinci
  • Michelle Bolduc
Miraculous Rhymes: The Writing of Gautier de Coinci. By Tony Hunt. (Gallica, 8). Woodbridge, D.S. Brewer, 2007. ix + 212pp. Hb £50.00.

The last few years has witnessed a wellspring of critical studies in English devoted to Gautier de Coinci’s Miracles de Nostre Dame (MND). In 2007 alone appeared two important works, Hunt’s Miraculous Rhymes and the collection of essays edited by Kathy M. Krause and Alison Stones Gautier de Coinci: Miracles, Music, and Manuscripts (Brepols). Hunt’s study differs from the latter’s broad approach: it means to carve out a place for Gautier in the history of Old French versification, and so provides myriad examples of Gautier’s wordplay. Hunt specifies two separate audiences for this work, whence its bi-partite structure. The first part, for medievalists, introduces Gautier and the MND (with English translation); the second, for Old French scholars, provides a thematic focus on Gautier’s wordplay. Medievalists generally will appreciate how Hunt deftly interweaves an emphasis on Gautier’s wordplay in his introduction to Gautier’s biography and the history of the composition, production, dissemination and reception of the MND. Hunt provides an instructive summary of the key structural and semantic examples of wordplay: in the work’s overall structure; in the narrative miracles; in the ‘bookends’ of the prologue and epilogue and in Gautier’s use of music (considered according to literary rather than musicological principles), as well as a useful glossary of rhetorical terms. Hunt’s copious examples of wordplay persuasively demonstrate that Gautier’s ‘aim is to appropriate the language, themes and characters of courtly literature with the intention of transcending that world in a vision of Mariocentric love to which his audience will find themselves subtly transported’ (p. 49). For specialists of Old French, Hunt offers an analysis of Gautier’s use of wordplay in terms of satire, morality and rhetoric, and according to a classical taxonomy of rhyme. He concludes with an analysis of Gautier’s wordplay in light of his Marian devotion. Comparing the MND with another thirteenth-century pious collection, the Vie des Pères, he finds that while ‘traces of one in the other’ are easily found, Gautier’s ‘rhetorical riot’ is ultimately incomparable (pp. 193–4). The last few pages offer the richest analysis: here, Hunt explores Gautier’s intensive occupation with Latin grammar and rhetoric, which suggests the possibility that Gautier had a Latin education, perhaps even in Paris. Moreover, Hunt’s suggestion that Gautier’s intricate wordplay is tied to an important shift in the thirteenth-century understanding of etymology as a part of exposition and derivatio is fascinating. This work is marred, however, by the omission of important studies on Gautier from the American academy, including Kathryn A. Duys’ 1997 NYU dissertation, ‘Books Shaped by Song’, and the aforementioned edition. Hunt’s initial claim that ‘[t]his is the first study in English to be devoted to one of the most remarkable writers of medieval France, . . . who, . . . has been woefully neglected for half a century, with no appraisal of his work as a whole’ (p. 3) is surprising, to say the least. Nevertheless, any medievalist, Old French specialist or not, will come away from Hunt’s study with a profound appreciation of Gautier’s poetic exuberance. [End Page 75]

Michelle Bolduc
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
...

pdf

Share