Poésies du non-sens: XIIIe–XIVe–XVesiècles, II: Resveries: oiseuses, resveries, traverses (review)

This edition is the second volume of medieval nonsense poetry by Martijn Rus, following his Fatrasies (Orléans: Paradigme, 2005; see French Studies, 62 (2008), 68–69). Unlike the ‘fatrasies’, which are made up of absolute nonsense, the three collections presented here constitute relative nonsense, following Paul Zumthor’s terms. In other words, the five couplets that make up most poems appear to make sense in themselves, but their combination produces meaninglessness (p. 123). Indeed, one of the most striking things about these three manuscript collections is the way in which their very oddity or even nonsense derives from the triteness of the apparent information they provide. For instance, poems tell us about the price of herring in Calais, that the sun will be at its hottest in August, and that rainy days are dull (pp. 15, 41, 107). By presenting strings of truisms and banalities, the ‘Resveries’ offer what appears to be a kind of anti-poetry that achieves its disconcerting effects by putting into verse the most prosaic of ideas. Indeed, as Rus points out in a conclusion that could just as well be an introduction, the poems seem to contain scraps of conversation, the kind of language that serves a purpose in aiding social cohesion (for example, talking about the weather) but which is resolutely unpoetic (p. 135). Certainly, Rus’s conclusion that the poetry consists in language that says nothing (p. 138) seems entirely convincing. Moreover, the poems avoid humour or satire and naturally they express moral platitudes, for example by remarking that people tend to want more and more money, that only an idiot squabbles with fools, or by noting a ban on swearing (pp. 17, 67, 87). Quite why there should have been a minor fashion for such poetry in northern France in the late thirteenth century, thereby coinciding with the ‘fatrasies’, is a mystery, but it is tempting to speculate that, like absolute nonsense, the ‘resveries’ offer a kind of poetic game in which the promise and immediate denial of meaning is the whole point. Indeed, the poems may be an elaborate parody in which the poet perpetually defers saying anything, in what would amount to a display of power. From this point of view, that the Resveries should conclude ‘Je ne vous en vueil plus dire | Sans argent’ (p. 77) is presumably no coincidence. In short, both this volume and the preceding one contain remarkable nonsense poetry from medieval France, clearly and attractively presented. The two volumes thereby deserve to achieve their principal objective of bringing this peculiar poetry to a wider audience.