Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France Studies in the Moving Word

This volume is one of the final outputs of the AHRC project Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France (2011-2014). It suggests a new way of reading Medieval French Literary Culture in its global dimension, by a close study of some major dynamics of production and circulation of French texts and manuscripts. It focuses on the two major axes of transmission of francophone textual culture: one going from Normandy and England across Flanders, to Burgundy; another across the Alps to Northern Italy and then to Cyprus and the Levant. In medieval Europe, cultural, political, and linguistic identities rarely coincided with modern national borders. As early as the end of the twelfth century, French rose to prominence as a lingua franca that could facilitate communication between people, regardless of their origin, background, or community. Between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, literary works were written or translated into French not only in France but also across Europe, from England and the Low Countries to as far afield as Italy, Cyprus, and the Holy Land. Many of these texts had a broad European circulation and for well over three hundred years they were transmitted, read, studied, imitated, and translated. Drawing on the results of the AHRC-funded research project Medieval Francophone Literary Culture Outside France, this volume aims to reassess medieval literary culture and explore it in a European and Mediterranean setting. The book, incorporating nineteen papers by international scholars, explores the circulation and production of francophone texts outside of France along two major axes of transmission: one stretching from England and Normandy across to Flanders and Burgundy, and the other running across the Pyrenees and Alps from the Iberian Peninsula to the Levant. In doing so, it offers new insights into how francophone literature forged a place for itself, both in medieval textual culture and, more generally, in Western cultural spheres.