Poétique de la nomination dans la lyrique médiévale: 'Mult volentiers me numerai' par Madeleine Jeay (review)

Numerous studies in the last few decades have demonstrated the inadequacy of an excessively formalist approach to the medieval lyric, which held that the notion of 'authorial subjectivity' was an unhelpful anachronism. This book aims to reinforce the more nuanced position of such recent scholarship by studying the function and effect of the name in lyric poetry through the Middle Ages. The first two chapters offer a diachronic overview of the practice of poetic naming from the twelfth-century initiators of troubadour lyric to the early decades of the sixteenth century. Much of the material here will be familiar to specialists on individual topics, but the survey allows Madeleine Jeay to make some perceptive comparative comments—for instance, on the relative lack of narrative and biographical hooks in trouvère song in contrast with the troubadour corpus (Jeay views the latter as the starting point for the naming practices of later poets). The central observation of these chapters is that self-nomination is at heart a device for appropriation of poetic work, and that this first-person authorial position is progressively fleshed out over the following centuries through the addition of biographical and narrative elements. Thus fleshed out, the name became both a poetic element, ripe for textual play, and a sign directing readers and audiences beyond the text. The remaining three chapters of the book each consider one type of beyond-text evoked by the play of naming in lyric: the representation of poetic networks; the constitution of a poetic canon; and the relationship between poet and patron. Here Jeay relies to a certain extent on existing work (for instance, for the chapter on poetic networks, Michèle Gally on the Arras milieu or Emma Cayley on debate as literary collaboration), and perhaps as a result some of the detailed discussion tends more towards summary than argument. On the other hand, a real strength throughout is the author's willingness to present each case study on its own terms, rather than sacrificing specificity in the pursuit of a single overarching narrative. The final chapter is particularly convincing in demonstrating how the naming of patrons can reflect varying conceptions of the balance of power between poet and protector: who is to be the judge of whom? The volume is rounded off by a conclusion that recapitulates the diachronic evolution of poetic naming through the period under consideration. The overall picture described by Jeay is convincing and nuanced, and her book provides a welcome contextualization of the practice for scholars working on its specific manifestation at any given moment during the pre-modern era of vernacular literature.