Portraits de médiévistes suisses (1850–2000): une profession au fil des temps (review)

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in the history of medieval studies, much important work having been done by Swiss scholars such as Alain Corbellari (Joseph Bédier, écrivain et philologue (Geneva: Droz, 1997)) and Ursula Bähler (Gaston Paris et la philologie romane (Droz, 2004)). This book examines the contributions of Swiss romance philologists and linguists during what are essentially the first hundred and fifty years of the discipline. The conjuncture of famous names from the past and distinguished Swiss contributors to the volume suggests an impressive — one might even say disproportionate — role that Switzerland played in medieval French literary studies since their institutional foundation. Only the subject of the final chapter, Roger Dragonetti, a Belgian-Italian, was not born in Switzerland, although he spent much of his career in Geneva and exercised a profound influence on medieval studies there. After a brief foreword by Ursula Bähler and Richard Trachsler, Marc-René Jung, himself one of the great Swiss masters of romance philology, offers an informed and personal commentary on the individual chapters. Anne-Marguerite Fryba-Reber examines the rise of the discipline in Swiss universities, the development of the curriculum, and the roles played by the incumbents of established chairs. Adolf Tobler was one of the founding fathers of romance philology, and the diverse aspects of his scholarly œuvre are examined by Franz Lebsanft and by Bähler. Less well known than Tobler, Heinrich Morf ’s wide-ranging work is situated historically by Trachsler at the moment when romance studies had just been established as a legitimate branch of academic knowledge. Peter Wunderli reveals both the strengths and weaknesses of the work of the positivist grammarian and phonologist Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke, a great ‘rival’ of Paul Meyer. One of the early champions of later medieval French literature was Arthur Piaget, a disciple of Gaston Paris and friend of Joseph Bédier; Piaget’s foundational scholarship is examined by Jacqueline Cerquiglini-Toulet. Corbellari looks at Paul Aebischer, a disinterested and bad teacher and colleague, who was generally despised and quickly forgotten in Lausanne; his scholarship is noteworthy without being groundbreaking. Reto R. Bezzola’s monumental Les Origines et la formation de la littérature courtoise en Occident (1944–63) is still required reading, and Trachsler further argues that his 1947 study of Erec et Enide is one of the first attempts to take Chrétien seriously. Gilles Eckhard brings out the salient characteristics of Jean Rychner’s meticulous scholarship on the chanson de geste, the fabliaux, and the Mort le roi Artu; his greatest influence was probably in the area of critical editions. Christopher Lucken’s study of Roger Dragonetti is supplemented by a bibliography of the latter’s work. Lucken makes a case for the originality and modernity of Dragonetti’s scholarship, which was not without its detractors. In an Annexe, Bähler and Cerquiglini-Toulet publish correspondence between Piaget and Gaston Paris. Although this is essentially an analysis of Swiss scholarship and its evolution over the years, biography is not neglected in so far as it relates to, and sometimes strongly influences, the scholarship of the individual. In sum, Portraits de médiévistes suisses is a serious contribution to the history of romance philology and a fascinating insight into the world of scholarship and Swiss universities.