Telling the Story in the Middle Ages. Essays in Honor of Evelyn Birge Vitz ed. by Kathryn A. Duys, Elizabeth Emery, and Laurie Postlewate (review)

This volume finds itself in the ambiguous position of being both a tribute to Evelyn Birge Vitz and a scholarly enterprise in its own right, capitalizing on Vitz’s research, but—fortunately—building its specific momentum and opening intriguing new perspectives. It so happens that Vitz’s studies have encompassed a large range of texts, and have put into (good) use many theoretical approaches that had not often been harnessed together to produce such original results. When the editors, in the Introduction, suggest that Vitz has done Cultural Studies before the concept was invented, they ipso facto acknowledge the diversity of the contributions gathered in honour of Vitz, the more so since they also underline the importance, both to Vitz and to the numerous scholars she influenced, of Paul Zumthor’s scholarship on the mouvance of medieval texts and on the sometimes delicate balance between orality, or aurality, and literature. Indeed, the Introduction does struggle a bit to find lignes directrices within the volume, which may be described as a versatile collection of diverse essays rather than as a coherent ensemble of related articles.

The first part, ‘Speaking of Stories,’ may be the least convincing. Both Linda Marie Zaerr, in ‘“Of Aunters They Began to Tell”: Informal Story in Medieval England and Modern America,’ and Simonetta Cochis, in ‘Plusurs en ai oïz conter: Performance and the Dramatic Poetics of Voice in the Lais of Marie de France,’ put a modern practice of private storytelling (Zaerr) or professional performance (Cochis) in relation with their medieval equivalents. While arguing for the possibility of aristocrats doubling as performers according to literary testimonies might be intriguing, comparing this hypothetical appropriation of stories within stories to the contemporary ways of adapting fairy-tales to one’s daughter’s feminist expectations does not produce very useful insights on the medieval materials under consideration. Nor does the analysis of several recent performances of lais by Marie de France demonstrate much about Marie’s writing and intentions, but rather it reflects the somewhat biased take of the performer on the writer, an interpretation that has not so much to do with Marie or the status of women or realities of medieval culture, as with what Cochis thinks they are or should be.

On the other hand, Marilyn Lawrence, in ‘The Storyteller’s Verbal jonglerie in “Renart jongleur,”’ presents a perspective cavalière on the famous Branch of the Roman de Renart, ‘Renart teinturier et jongleur,’ that suggests that the goupil’s brilliancy in showcasing his own career when playing the part of a Breton juggler is more than matched by his talent in orchestrating the discourse of his entourage when he is supposedly dead and finally regaining his mastery on the text as well as his identity: Renart, whether dead or alive, whether object or subject of discourse, is the ultimate master of the performing game. One might argue that Nancy Freeman Regalado, in ‘Who Tells the Stories of Poetry? Villon and his Readers,’ pursues a similar line of inquiry that exposes the resemblance between the goupil and the bon follastre, with the difference that the first one operates within the textual space, while the latter acts upon the unsuspecting reader. Regalado’s very clever analysis shows how the hints contained in the Testament, while not building a narrative per se, invite the reader to construct his/her own narrative about the persona(s) of Villon. The demonstration, however, is slightly marred by Regalado’s reliance on a translation that is not entirely accurate, or rather, that ‘rearranges’ the text in order to fit what the translator thinks of Villon.

The second part, ‘Inscribing Studies,’ introduces another player in the game: the manuscript in its materiality, whether at the level of textual variants or with regard to illustrations...