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100 chapter seven Modes of Composition Numeral Patterns Rhetoric gives only very general indications as to the composition of a work. Numeral patterns were therefore a powerful resource in the Middle Ages. Behind this pattern can be found references to cosmology, to the Bible, and to folklore. The underlying principle, in fact, is the certitude that the world is well ordered. The author seeks to reproduce this same perfection. A composition of this type has a double value: a structural value and a symbolic value according to the number retained. Subtle studies have been conducted to analyze, according to this principle , the structure of the first hagiographic legends. Eleonor Webster Bulatkin has asserted that the Vie de saint Alexis is organized around the number five and its powers, and can be interpreted with the help of this number’s symbolism. Cesare Segre has analyzed the Chanson de sainte Foy (Song of Saint Fides) and shown that it is composed of five periods of eleven stanzas. The numeral organization stands out in Dante’s Divine Comedy where the three times thirty-three songs, plus one, in Inferno, that serve as a prologue, tell of the unity in the trinity. Esthetically speaking, a few figures or numbers are especially significant . Round numbers are among these. La Somme le roi (The Book of Vices and Virtues) [by Frère Laurent d’Orléans,confessor to King Philippe le Hardi (1270–1285)] affirms this of the number 100: The number 100 is the most perfect, for it represents a round figure that is the most beautiful and most perfect among the others; for, just as in the round figure the end returns to its beginning and resembles in this way a crown, the number 100 joins the end to the beginning for 10 times 10 equals 100, which signifies the crown that crowns the Wise Virgins. Modes of Composition 101 (Li nombres de .C. est li plus parfez, quar il represante une figure reonde qui est la plus bele et la plus parfaite entre les autres; quar, auxi come en la reonde figure la fin retorne a son comancement et fet auxi comme une corone, auxi li nombre de .C. joint la fin au comancement, quar .X. foiz .X. sont .C., qui senefie la corone qui les sages virges coronne.) The number fifty functions in the same way. The numbers “one hundred” and “fifty” supply a “natural” ending for poems built in stanzas. Les Vers de la mort (Verses on Death) by Hélinand de Froidmont contains fifty stanzas. When lyrical poetry of fixed forms was transformed into stories in the fourteenth century, there began the emergence of collections of one hundred ballades: Cent Ballades and Cent Ballades d’Amant et de Dame by Christine de Pizan, Cent Ballades by Jean Le Seneschal and his friends, Cinkante Balades (Fifty Ballades) by John Gower. This numeral organization also applies to the narrative genre: Boccaccio ’s Decameron, the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles. And to didactic texts as well, like the Epistre Othea by Christine de Pizan, known also as Cent Histoires de Troie (One Hundred Stories of Troy). The case of Martial d’Auvergne’s fifty-one Arrêts d’amour (Love Judgments ) is significant. Why fifty-one and not fifty? It seems that the supplementary unit, the fifty-first judgment, underlines the cyclic form of the work, its infinite movement that only an arbitrary decision can stop. In this case, the author uses not the round number, but a device that combines the tiredness of the presiding judge, “Who was weary and could go on no longer” (Qui estoit las et n’en povoit plus), the weak voice of the clerk who continues to pronounce the judgments that the author cannot hear and therefore record and, finally, his own tiredness: “And then my quill was very weary, which is why I couldn’t understand a thing” (Et puis ma plume estoit fort lasse,/Par quoy n’eusse sceu rien comprendre ). Other numbers and figures play on symbolic values. The number three is characteristic of the outlines of tales and is found in texts such as Le Dit des trois morts et des trois vifs (The Tale of the Three Dead Men and the Three Live Ones), or with a comic effect founded on the use of repetition in the fabliaux. Les Trois Dames qui troverent l’anel (The Three Ladies Who Found the Ring), Les Trois Bossus ménestrels (The Three [3.143.4.181] Project...

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