Marie de France: A Critical Companion by Sharon Kinoshita, Peggy McCracken (review)

Reviews 269 chapter to each of the following performance objects: Expo 67 with its iconic Quebec pavilion and hostesses; Michel Tremblay’s controversial and widely-translated play, Les belles-sœurs; the dramatic and critical œuvre of Italo-Québécois author Marco Micone; the image-theater performances by the troupe Carbone 14; and the music and persona of Céline Dion. The first two case studies examine how the conceptual categories of reflection and construction function to establish a purely mimetic relation between a cultural production and the nation whose attributes it projects. The last three cases reveal the inadequacies of these conventional figures to define québécité in a postmodern society where the dominant ideologies of Québécois nationalism have shifted to those of transculturalism and globalism. Hurley makes a compelling case for revising the terms for articulating the performance-nation relationship to include the alternate figures of simulation, metonymy, and affection, terms which privilege emotional, rather than representational, labor and focus attention upon the ways in which a production’s affective appeals create shared emotional connections. While perhaps not as accessible to non-specialists as the dust jacket claims, Hurley’s study constitutes a challenge well worth taking up. Davidson College (NC) Carole A. Kruger Kinoshita, Sharon, and Peggy McCracken. Marie de France: A Critical Companion . Cambridge: Brewer, 2012. ISBN 978-1-84384-301. Pp. xii + 228. $90. This ambitious study reconsiders not only the Lais,but also Ysopë and L’espurgatoire seint Patriz (with gestures at La vie seinte Audree). Kinoshita and McCracken aim “to rethink standard questions such as those of origins, plot, character, structure, and influence”(vii) through categories they deem central for understanding medieval literature , including authorship, translation, space/movement,embodiment, repetition, and difference. The introduction centers on Marie’s authorship based on the complex historical , cultural, literary and linguistic features of Angevin Britain ca. 1170. The authors then explore literary history including translation and multilingualism (ch. 2) through transmission (internal authorship, material objects, and lexica), and conclude with instances of translatio (Aesop’s Fables to Ysopë through Anglo-Saxon literary traditions; the Tractatus de Purgatorio Sancti Patricii to L’espurgatoire by way of Ireland). They also examine the historical context of her works (ch. 3), focusing on secular values associated with courtly love and feudal society: the importance of feudal relationships and lineage (Lais); how feudal society is criticized (Ysopë); how secular life remains possible in the afterlife (L’espurgatoire); and finally, how secular values, even lay piety, are rejected (La vie seinte Audree). The following chapters examine plot, characters,and narrative techniques through contemporary theoretical preoccupations. Their analysis of plot focuses on movement (ch. 4): how mobility is valued as aventure (Lais), condemned (Ysopë), or a structuring principle (L’espurgatoire). They explore characters through the notion of embodiment (ch. 5): how animals, particularly birds, interact with human beings (Lais),resist moral appraisal (Ysopë),or figure as monstrous representations of human appetite with which souls must battle (L’espurgatoire).Finally, they explore narrative techniques through themes of repetition and variation (ch. 6): non-differentiation as a structuring device and the recurrence of speeches (Lais); how the lais anonymes and Ysopë adapt and kaleidoscope the themes and stylistics of certain lais; finally, how variety is manifest in L’espurgatoire and La vie seinte Audree. The conclusion examines the posterity of Marie’s works in manuscripts—those of her works and of others (e.g.,Denis de Piramus)—and in two rewritings of the Lais (Gautier d’Arras’s Ille et Galeron and Galeran de Bretagne). There are two contrasting, if minor, flaws: brevity of analysis (Ysopë, L’espurgatoire), and repetition, especially of plot (Lais). While the former is frustrating (two paragraphs exploring the narrative techniques of Ysopë and L’espurgatoire [198–99] feel too cursory), the latter offers, happily, intriguing nuance. For example, we read that‘Bisclavret’ is a Breton word three times over. From an initial mention (34), we learn additionally that Bisclavret, like L’aüstic, provides a translation for its title (150) and finally, that the translation of ‘bisclavret’ might refer not to an individual, but rather to the species of werewolf (169). Kinoshita and McCracken’s study...