Prof. Martha Carlin

                                                                         Week 11: Tuesday
 

                                                      ART AND LITERATURE, c. 1000-1300
 
 

Literary genres that flourished between 1000 and 1300 included:

    Epic poetry:
        vernacular chansons de gestes ("songs of great deeds") such as The Song of Roland
        (French) and The Song of My Cid (Spanish) celebrated great heroes, military brotherhood, and
        feudal loyalty

    Lyric poetry:
        male and female troubadours celebrated courtly love and sang of the longings and tribulations of
        lovers

    Romance:
        prose tales of courtly heroism mixed with fantasy, such as the stories of King Arthur and his Round Table,
        and celebrating the knight's love for his lady over his loyalty to his lord

    Allegory:
        didactic prose or verse tales, in which abstract concepts are represented by personifications
        such as Charity, Jealousy, or Love.  Example: The Romance of the Rose, by William de Lorris
        (d. c. 1145), continued by Jean de Meun (d. 1305).

    Fabliaux:
        urban-centered short, crude, satyrical poems that mocked conventional authority and morality.

    Fables:
        brief allegories of medieval society that mock authority and chivalric ideals, using animals as the
        characters (e.g., Renard the Fox, Noble the Lion, etc.).

    "Mystery" (guild) plays:
        plays based on religious themes, produced beginning in the 13th cent. by urban trade and craft guilds
        ("mysteries," from Latin ministeria).

Architectural styles, 1000-1500:

    Romanesque (c. 1000-1150):
        heavy, solid buildings emphasizing grandeur, unity, and stability, and featuring small windows,
        barrel vaults, and round arches, supported externally by wall buttresses

          Examples:
             Schematic drawings of Romanesque basilica
             St. Sernin, Toulouse (1080-1120): plan, aerial photo, interior 
             St. Etienne, Caen (1067-1135): plan, west front, interior elevation

    Gothic (beginning c. 1150):

The 12th century saw a rise of vernacular literature, both courtly and popular.  French vernacular poets
    of the 12th century include:
        Thibaut IV, count of Champagne: love poetry and songs
        Marie de France and Chrétien de Troyes: Arthurian romances
        Rutebeuf: poems and songs of daily life

Professional scribes copied texts onto parchment leaves, which were bound into books.  Students and
    scholars often rented or borrowed books to copy themselves.  Students took lecture notes and
    scholars drafted texts on wax tablets -- all in Latin -- and made a clean copy later on parchment.
    Click here to see:
         16 polyptychs (booklets), containing 127 wooden leaves, of medieval wax tablets (c. 1250-1530) from the State Archive of Toruń, Poland
          a leaf from a 15th-century wax tablet from Reykjavik, Iceland, and
          a booklet of eight 14th-century wax tablet leaves in its original leather case from York, England
          modern reproductions of wax tablets and styli
          tools used in ruling parchment leaves
          quill pen used for writing in ink