Constantinople and the West in Medieval French Literature: Renewal and Utopia by Rima Devereaux (review)

Rima Devereaux's study is simultaneously broad yet detailed, drawing together people, places, and peregrinations to explore the literary representation of the Byzantine capital in ten Old French and Franco-Italian works of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. By ranging across genres and themes—from emperors to princesses, cities to communities —she provides flavours of the admired and desired, of the fear of inferiority, and of the need for conquest. In a lucid and well-reasoned Introduction, the boundaries of the project are succinctly stated and its literary focus underscored. Devereaux builds on Krijnie Ciggaar's work in Western Travellers to Constantinople (Leiden: Brill, 1996) and presents translatio, her fil conducteur, as a way to move between concepts of renovatio (renewal) and aemulatio (imitation). This process is then distinguished from the admiratio (admiration) associated with utopian treatments of Constantinople. The work has three sections, which, broadly speaking, focus on terminological and intellectual debates, tensions between admiration and imitation, and the promotion and/or problematization of Western renewal. In Chapter 1 Devereaux contextualizes the key terms of her study, relating them to the Augustinian concept of the city, the role of the onlooker, and the potential value of intergeneric study. In her subsequent engagement with attitudes towards forms of kingship, marriage alliance, and territorial conquest, she questions the location of possible models of renewal and the means by which such transformation may be realized, also addressing the successes and failures of Constantinople as possible utopia and as 'a Western textual artefact' (p. 30). Despite the fact that this is primarily a literary study, Devereaux integrates her close analyses with historical details and manuscript contextualization; this can be seen in her discussion of Partonopeus de Blois (Chapter 3), connecting contemporary European marriages with the literary representations of East-West alliances, or in her treatment of notions of truth and history in relation to the Estoire de Venise and the Fourth Crusade (Chapter 6). Devereaux's skill lies in drawing together materials that may initially seem distinct, whether in terms of genre, language, or medium — perhaps most clearly shown in her comparison of Robert de Clari's Conquête de Constantinople and the Franco-Italian Macario (Chapter 4). The interest of this study also lies in the combination of less familiar works such as Marques de Rome (Chapter 5) with more frequently cited Old French sources such as the Pèlerinage de Charlemagne (Chapter 2). Although, at times, further engagement with the theoretical concepts mentioned, such as orientalism and otherness, might have given greater nuance to the overall focus on renewal and utopia, this minor shortcoming does not diminish the value of uniting literary texts and other media forms, examples of which include manuscript miniatures (Chapter 5) and Byzantine architecture (Chapter 3). The result is a thought-provoking and accessible study of Eastern and Western 'sites of power' (p. 3), in which Constantinople is seen to be a function or process as much as a physical space. The book also — perhaps unexpectedly — causes us to reassess the uses of stock literary themes such as the treacherous vassal or the maligned wife.