Gautier de Coinci: Miracles, Music, and Manuscripts (review)

The fifteen selections of this timely volume, which grew out of an international conference on Gautier de Coinci held at the University of Pittsburgh in 2005, bring together perspectives from Old French literature and drama, art history, and musicology. In their examination of the music, images, and texts of the vast manuscript tradition of the Miracles de Nostre Dame (MND), the authors raise vital questions regarding authorial program and manuscript compilation, which, though precocious for the mid-thirteenth century, are currently being asked of the trouvère chansonniers as well. In the spirit of the current scholarly focus on manuscript context, moreover, this volume constitutes an integrated whole reflective of its object of study: its authors cite each other, allude to each other's arguments, and even offer competing analyses of the same topic, thus making the collection an intertextual tour de force.

The papers, in English or in French, with abstracts in the other language, are organized into four sections: (1) Manuscripts, (2) Words and Music, (3) Figures and Types, and (4) Contexts. Six appendices totaling 100 pages place at the reader's fingertips indispensable reference tools that include an annotated list of all MND manuscripts; sublists featuring illustrated manuscripts and those containing lyric pieces; and a list of owners of MND manuscripts, both monastic and lay, early and post-1500. The volume is framed by an excellent introduction placing Gautier and the MND in the context of thirteenth-century literary experimentation and outlining the issues raised by the featured scholarly articles (Ardis Butterfield) and by a selected bibliography and index.

The section titled "Manuscripts" looks at the companion texts compiled with the MND, as they reveal Gautier's œuvre to be more polished and complete than hitherto acknowledged (Olivier Collet), and examines the miniatures both for vital clues to manuscript dating and attribution (Alison Stones) and for what they can reveal, in light of contemporary intergeneric works, about Gautier's dual identity as monk and minstrel (Kathryn Duys).

Under the rubric "Words and Music," attention is drawn to Gautier's predilection for annominatio, a form of wordplay that assures that those passages constructed paronomastically are as untranslatable as they are delightful (Pierre Kunstman, Robert L. A. Clark), while on the musical side, its contributors scrutinize the medieval practice of contrafacture in a culture of mixed orality and offer Gautier a place along the continuum of musical improvisation/ composition (Frédéric Billiet); analyze the music of the St. Leocadia cycle and what it reveals about the same questions of continuity/ innovation (Claire Chamiyé Couderc); and trace the literary and musical history of the response Gaude, Maria Virgo, which Gautier wields as an apology for Christianity (Barbara Haagh).

"Figures and Types"focuses on the miracles themselves, examining (1) childbirth miracles, particularly The Pregnant Abbess, as an expression of destabilized masculine authority (Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski), (2) the panoply of sins that Marian intervention redeems and their contribution to Gautier's poetic project (Yasmina Foehr-Janssens), (3) the role of the gaze in victimizing the heroines of the miracle stories focusing on women (Kathy M. Krause), and (4) images of Mary in the Soissons manuscript of the MND and their role in the growth of lay devotional practices of the fourteenth century (Nancy Black).

"Contexts," finally, highlights Gautier's incarnational miracles against the backdrop of an evolving piety focusing on the Incarnation (Laurel Broughton); offers a systematic comparison between MND and the Old French Vie des Pères, concluding that their subtle differences reflect fundamental distinctions in intended audience (Adrian P. Tudor); and proposes a rapprochement, in the provocatory spirit of Jacques Ribard, between MND and the fabliau (†Brian J. Levy).

This volume makes significant advances in Gautier studies and promises, with its multifaceted approach, to shape current work in the intersection between the sacred and the secular. It is a groundbreaking work of interest to medievalists from all...