Constructions of Childhood and Youth in Old French Narrative by Phyllis Gaffney (review)

Reviews 227 increase difficulties; it does not simplify but complicate. Yet interpretation paradoxically also nourishes a work: “Une œuvre a besoin de l’interprétation pour rester vivante”(91). In this light, essayistic interpretation must be seen as an act of generosity, responding to this demand of the text—sustaining rather than foreclosing (which would be tantamount to killing the œuvre) its semantic openness. The issue of partial truths—as opposed to allegorical truths or transcendental certitudes—becomes more than an epistemological matter; interpreting is a form of life (“L’interprétation est la vie de l’esprit humain”[115]); it necessarily evokes ethical and aesthetic registers. The force of Foglia’s book lies in this powerful and timely reminder. Whitman College (WA) Zahi Zalloua Gaffney, Phyllis. Constructions of Childhood and Youth in Old French Narrative. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011. ISBN 978-0-7546-6920-3. Pp. viii + 236. $99.95. Gaffney’s book includes a preface, three sections divided into six chapters,‘Works Cited,’ and an index. The preface introduces Philippe Ariès’s 1960 study of childhood, now largely discredited. Gaffney proposes to add to evidence about cultural ideas of childhood in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in Northern France through imaginative literature, since “a culture’s fables and stories can unlock what it thinks and feels at a deep level”(vii). The first two chapters summarize Ariès’s argument together with contrary historical and archeological evidence. Gaffney begins with a résumé of literary and linguistic analyses of Old French terms for childhood and youth, and suggests that the type of text influences how childhood is represented, though she acknowledges overlap in the two genres (epic and romance), and the lack of precision for dating texts and mapping terms. Gaffney hypothesizes that epic shows nature whereas romance illustrates nurture. Part two treats childhood in chanson de geste, then in romance, and examines enfances poems (those narrating the childhood of a hero) specifically, contrasting representations in the different genres. In the chanson de geste, Gaffney finds male youths tasked with helping their lineage “in ancestral feuds, avenging wrongs perpetrated against their kinsmen”(99) versus romance youths who seek to find their history, and whose education may be specifically defined in the text; where young women appear, they are wiser than male counterparts, but are few (126). Chapter 4 concludes that, in romance, protagonists become narrators since they must discover their own childhood (158). Finally, Gaffney addresses the question of enfances as a genre and the relationship between epic and romance; she clearly notes the difficulties in distinguishing epic from romance, and how the two grow together at the end of the period considered. She carefully avoids most stereotypes that have tainted contrasts of epic and romance, though the mention of a chanson de geste heroine who “lacks plausibility”(132) is bothersome, for plausibility (or what we call realism), is not the goal of the chanson de geste. Gaffney, however, carefully notes “implausibilities” (132) also in the romance heroine to whom she compares the epic figure. She suggests that romance influenced epic. Here she reinterprets the longstanding tendency to discuss epic as expanding backwards to include the childhood of a hero in the larger narrative context,biography and genealogy increasingly forming parts of adult identity. Examples are wide-ranging, including well-known and lesser-known works, with careful contrasts of epic and romance characters (for example, Guillaume d’Orange and Gauvain). Part three,“A Slow Conversion of Sensibility,”illustrates the cultural changes of the twelfth century concomitant with change in literary taste, from noble women’s roles and instruction to marriage laws and changes in the administration of the sacraments , arguing convincingly for a“shifting change of direction in the history of mentalities ” (195) that endures today. “Works Cited” are divided into “Primary texts,” “Secondary Sources,”and“Reference Works.”Gaffney has read widely, and intelligently includes both collections of essays by title and by articles cited. There was a missing reference, Harf-Lancner 1994 (153, n145), but other items were present. Not only is this volume wide-ranging and thoughtful, it is also extremely readable. Though Gaffney carefully introduces her arguments and reviews her findings, she does so...