Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France

中世纪学者很清楚，在整个中世纪盛期，法语在法兰西王国的法语区之外被广泛使用。法文文本得到广泛传播，在法国境外也有大量讲法语的土著文本传统。然而，19世纪C。民族主义文学史学家已经被证明是顽强的，如果法国以外的法语文学文化的一些领域，主要是盎格鲁-诺曼，一直是持续研究的主题，用法语写的文本的“法国性”在实践中很少受到质疑。因此，法国文化和法语文学传统在法国以外的传播的性质和程度仍然没有得到充分的研究和不精确的校准。此外，以“非标准”法语形式传播的文本往往被视为有缺陷或删节，不值得注意。该项目提出了中世纪法语文学文化的调查，将集中在法国，而不是在法语文本文化的传播的两个重要轴：一个是从英格兰跨越弗兰德斯，到勃艮第和超越;另一个跨越阿尔卑斯山到北方意大利，然后进入地中海和更远的塞浦路斯和黎凡特。巴黎为这些轴心做出了贡献，但并不一定是它们的中心。我们不只是考虑文本从何而来及其最早的形式，我们将研究它们去了哪里：何时，以何种形式以及为什么它们旅行。手稿的出处很少被系统地研究（通常只是在目录或关键版本中没有注意到），因此在许多情况下，法语文本的手稿被隐含地假定为“法语”，而没有考虑该术语的价值。然而，很明显，一些广泛传播的中世纪法语文本的很大一部分幸存手稿来自法国境外。这一现象的程度尚不清楚，这正是我们将努力建立的。该项目集中在12世纪和13世纪的6个主要法语文本传统。在13世纪和14世纪传遍了整个欧洲，以及其他语言的翻译/改编的强大遗产：《亚历山大的罗马》、《特洛伊的罗马》、《兰斯洛特和特里斯坦的散文》、《玫瑰的罗马》和布鲁内托·拉蒂尼的《特雷索尔》。我们的目标是通过确定幸存手稿的出处及其轨迹，尽可能准确地绘制这些文本的传播地图。由于传统的学术研究主要关注权威性的“原件”的建立，并且通常对文本在传播过程中的变化不太感兴趣，因此这项新的研究将揭示大量迄今为止关于法语文学文化传播的封闭数据，我们的首要目标是提供关于这些文本在时间和空间上传播的可靠经验数据。利用这些经验数据，项目组将解决一系列关于使用法语作为法国以外文化身份标志的更具投机性的问题。1）法语文本在法国以外的社会和文化环境中编写和传播？2)是否存在一种跨国的法语文学文化，它是如何变化的？3)中世纪法语文学文本的焦点和形式是否随着迁移而改变？4)法国以外的生产和传播场所是否影响了法国的文学传统？5)法语文学是否意味着文化身份？如果是这样的话，这与法国有关系吗？6)文化特性是否应该被重新定义为移动的，由移动产生的和由地点产生的一样多？7)非标准和混合形式的法语的文化负担是什么？8)非标准形式如何影响我们对法语的理解？9)这对文学史有何影响？

Medievalists are well aware that French was used widely outside French-speaking areas of the kingdom of France throughout the high Middle Ages. Texts in French were widely disseminated and there were substantial indigenous francophone textual traditions outside the borders of France. However, the agendas set by 19th-c. nationalist literary historians have proved tenacious and if some areas of francophone literary culture outside France, principally Anglo-Norman, have been the subject of sustained research, the 'Frenchness' of texts written in French has in practice rarely been questioned. As a result, the nature and extent of the dissemination of French culture and francophone literary traditions outside France remains under-researched and imprecisely calibrated. Furthermore, texts transmitted in 'non-standard' forms of French have often been dismissed as flawed or bowdlerized, unworthy of attention. This project proposes an investigation of medieval francophone literary culture that will be centred not on France but rather on two important axes of transmission of francophone textual culture: one that goes from England across Flanders, to Burgundy and beyond; another across the Alps to Northern Italy and then out into the Mediterranean and further afield to Cyprus and the Levant. Paris contributes to these axes, but does not necessarily stand at their centre. Rather than considering simply where texts come from and their earliest form, we will investigate where they go: when, in what form and why they travel. The provenance of manuscripts is rarely studied systematically (often simply not noted in catalogues or critical editions), so that in many instances a manuscript with texts in French is implicitly assumed to be 'French', without the value of the term being considered. Yet it is clear that a substantial proportion of surviving manuscripts for some widely disseminated medieval texts in French comes from outside France. The extent of the phenomenon is unknown, and this is precisely what we will endeavour to establish.The project focuses upon 6 major francophone textual traditions from the 12th and 13th c. that have a pan-European dissemination in the 13th and 14th c., as well as strong legacies of translations/adaptations in other languages: the Roman d'Alexandre, the Roman de Troie, the Lancelot and Tristan en prose, the Roman de la Rose and Brunetto Latini's Trésor. Our aim is to map, insofar and as accurately as is possible, the dissemination of these texts by determining the provenance of surviving manuscripts, and their trajectory. Because traditional scholarship has been largely concerned with the establishment of authoritative 'originals' and generally been less interested in what becomes of texts as they are transmitted, this new research will reveal a considerable body of hitherto occluded data on the dissemination of francophone literary culture.Our first aim is to provide solid empirical data on the dissemination of these texts through time and space. Using this empirical data, the project team will address a series of more speculative questions concerning the use of French as a marker of cultural identity outside France.1) In what social and cultural milieus were francophone texts composed and disseminated outside France? 2) Is there a transnational francophone literary culture, and how does it vary? 3) Does the focus and form of medieval francophone literary texts change as they migrate? 4) Do sites of production and transmission outside France influence literary traditions in France? 5) Does literary French imply a cultural identity? If so, is this necessarily associated with France? 6) Should cultural identities be reconceived as mobile, produced by movement as much as by place?7) What is the cultural freight of non-standard and hybrid forms of French? 8) How do non-standard forms influence our understanding of what French is? 9) Are there implications for literary history?