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BOOK REVIEWS

Wendy Pfeffer, Le festin du troubadour: Nourriture, société et littérature en Occitanie (1100-1500), trans. Wendy PFEFFER and Patrick FRENCH. Cahors: La Louve éditions, 2016. P. 393. €26. ISBN: 978-2-916488-76-9.

Initially intrigued by references to wine in troubadour lyric, Wendy Pfeffer realized that there was a wealth of information to discover about medieval Occitania’s cuisine. In this wide-ranging, carefully documented, in-depth study of food and drink in the Midi across four centuries, Pfeffer shines a spotlight on the region. Combining literature, archaeological evidence, and historical documents, Pfeffer’s study offers a compelling analysis of the varied roles that food played in medieval Occitan society and convincingly argues that the Midi possessed its own distinctive culinary history.

Pfeffer first places Occitania in its historical and geographical context. She presents her multidisciplinary approach before considering comments made by inhabitants or travelers and looking at how cuisine varied by social class and by region. From everyday basics (bread and wine) to fast day foods to feast day foods, Pfeffer uncovers an impressive array of grains, fruits and vegetables, spices and condiments, fish and seafood, dairy products, meat, fats and oil, sugars and sweets, and beverages that made up the medieval Occitan diet.

Pfeffer then turns her attention to the kitchen and to the organization of meals. She notes the changing status of cooks over the centuries and examines in detail utensils, cooking tools and containers, cooking methods, and the kitchen’s physical space. Pfeffer also provides an overview of medieval attitudes toward food, studying the number of meals eaten per day, the order of courses in a meal, and table manners. She notes differences among social classes, concluding that banquets were 26a demonstration of power for upper classes and that members of lower social classes ate relatively well.

Literary references to food in troubadour lyric, romance, and theater receive special attention as the book concludes. Pfeffer finds that troubadours most often allude to food in critical or satirical songs, and that these mentions reveal expectations of guests and hosts. Romances tend to emphasize social status and hierarchies; taken as a group, they point to changes in Occitan society over time. Pfeffer contends that theatrical works depict food realistically but also use it to comic ends. The volume ends with an annex containing recipes, offering interested readers a literal taste of medieval Occitan cooking. Moreover, Pfeffer provides a glossary of Occitan, Catalan, and Latin culinary terms (she translates the terms as they arise in each chapter, as well).

Pfeffer’s work remedies the tendency of earlier scholars to conflate the cuisine of northern and southern medieval France. The strength of her study lies in its simultaneous breadth—drawing on sources from diverse fields—and specificity, with evidence from different regions (including Provence, Quercy, and Gascony) and social classes, from peasants to the Papal court in Avignon. As may be expected in such a comprehensive study, there is some repetition from one section to the next. There are also several typographical errors (such as “atttention” in footnote one). These minor points do not detract in the least from Pfeffer’s remarkable achievement. She has succeeded admirably in making her subject appealing to a wide audience, from medieval scholars to cooks and gourmands. Pfeffer leaves no doubt that the medieval Midi had its own cuisine, and her book is sure to leave readers hungering for a meal—and a trip to the south of France.

Kristin L. Burr

Saint Joseph’s University

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Saint-Cricq, Gaël, with Eglal Doss-Quinby and Samuel N. Rosenberg. Motets from the Chansonnier de Noailles. (Recent Researches in the Music of the Middle Ages and Early Renaissance, 42.) Middleton, WI: A-R Editions, Inc., 2017. lxxxiv, 192 Pp. ISBN:978-0-89579-862-6. $360.00.

This edition, by a rising star in the musicological world and by two established experts in Old French philology, introduces the reader to a hitherto understudied corpus of motets. The 91 motets which comprise Collection 3 (f. 179r-197r) of BnF f. fr. 12615 (trouvère MS T) are distinguished from the monophonic songs in this chansonnier by the siglum N. Their significance lies in their reflection of a northern, Artesian, practice of motet composition and performance. Indeed, all features of the motet collection, including “scribal language, codicological evidence, musico-literary paleographic traits, and polyphonic formatting” (“Philological Complement Part 1”, p. 51), point to a collection of motets copied in the 1270s in the Artois. Significantly, fewer than half (41) of the motets recorded here are concordant with Parisian sources, while 40 are unique to MSS T and M (le Chansonnier du Roi) and another 10 are shared by M and/or StV, the Saint Victor manuscript (BnF f. lat. 15139). In addition to these statistics, which apply only to motet sources, another 3% of the motetus texts in N are drawn from the monophonic repertoire, while as many as 14% occur in other sources as clausulae or conducti.

The volume is devoted largely to the musical features of MS N. The poetic texts are transcribed and translated between Saint-Cricq’s Introduction, which offers a meticulous discussion of the musical features and culture of these motets, and the melodic transcriptions themselves. The textual apparatus is thus bare bones, presenting, in addition to the impeccable transcriptions and excellent English versions of the texts, brief entries for Versification and Rejected Readings. A complete philological analysis is to be found, however, in two ancillary sources, readily accessible online:

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1. Rosenberg, Samuel N., with Eglal Doss-Quinby. “Philological Complement to Motets from the Chansonnier de Noailles (BnF f. fr. 12615), Part 1: Language of the Scribe and Versification.” Textual Cultures 10.2 (2016 [2018]), 51-75.

2. Doss-Quinby, Eglal, with Samuel N. Rosenberg. “Philological Complement to Motets from the Chansonnier de Noailles (BnF f. fr. 12615), Part 2: Textual Variants.” Faculty Publications 4 (http://scholarworks.smith.edu/frn_facpubs/4).

The title volume is organized under three major rubrics: Introduction, Texts and Translations, and Motets. Introduction contains seven sub-headings which offer a wealth of information on the music of the corpus. These include 1) The Manuscript, 2) The Motet Collection, 3) Notation and Scribes, 4) Compositional Processes, 5) The Context of Creation and Performance, 6) Notes on Performance, and 7) Notes. Texts and Translations is comprised of 1) Thematic Content, 2) Editorial Principles, 3) Presentation of the Texts and Translations, and 4) Notes, followed by the motet texts themselves. All upper voices are in Old French. Of the 91 motets presented in this section, the vast majority are for two voices, with only four 3-voice pieces and a single piece for four voices. The Tables of Versification & Rejected Readings which follow each text/translation are supplemented by occasional textual notes, a few of them quite extensive. Motets, finally, is comprised of the notated text of each voice of the edited compositions. In keeping with editorial practice, as well as with manuscript tradition, the voices are presented vertically rather than in score form.

The tenor is missing in three of the unica, which raises some probing questions about the transmission of these pieces. Indeed, for G. Saint-Cricq, MS N’s musical scribe reveals a decided discomfort with the notation of polyphonic music, as N’s motets are notated entirely without rhythm. As the same hand is responsible for the notation of the Chansonnier du roi de Navarre, Collection 1 in MS T, its scribe appears to have been trained primarily in monophonic, non-modal music—despite, curiously, the flawless notation in mode 1 of a single Thibaut song, “Por conforter ma pesance” (RS 273). Saint-Cricq thus transcribed those motets concordant with Parisian sources directly in ternary rhythm, while unica are presented first in unmeasured, then in measured transcription, whether in mode 1 (trochaic) or mode 2 (iambic). In cases where it was 29impossible to decide—despite careful study of the color (phrasal unit) of the tenor and analysis of the harmonic rules connecting the tenor to the upper voice(s)—whether the piece was in mode 1 or 2, both options are given, reflecting the music editor’s desideratum to avoid dogmatism by not interpolating more than the sources offer.

The motet, particularly as exemplified in this collection, is characterized by an inventiveness, formal variation, and irregularity “unequaled by any other Old French lyric type” (Part 1, p. 55). While this observation is familiar as it applies to the generic breadth and extensive lyric citation which characterize motet texts, this collection reserves several surprises, both textual and musical. One such example is a small corpus (folios 60, 62-67) of kurtzmotetten (Hoffman, 1970), which appear in the same order in MSS N and R (the motet collection of MS M). Their motetus texts vary in length from two to six lines and appear to be in dialogue with one another, as the gender of the lyric I changes with each motet, and the repartee forms a sequential conversation between two lovers. These motets and several others in the collection make use, in their tenors, of melismas which are unknown in the Parisian repertoire and which are, in some instances, mis-matched to their tenor word. The probing, insightful discussion of these cases is firmly rooted in the scholarly literature and reflects a thorough knowledge of chant repertoire.

This work will prove of great interest to specialists in medieval French poetry, including those conversant primarily with monophonic music, and offers to both literary scholars and musicologists a treasure trove of hitherto unedited polyphonic song that belongs in every music library. The edition establishes this collection, located as it is in a trouvère chansonnier, as a bridge between the monophonic and polyphonic repertoires which every trouvère scholar is invited to cross. It also represents the first foray, for this editorial team, into the world of polyphonic performance and manuscript production outside of Paris. As such, it intersects with a flourishing scholarly inquiry into the Artois as a center of musical culture in the late 13th century.

Christopher Callahan

Illinois Wesleyan University

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The Romance of Thebes (Roman de Thèbes), trans. Joan M. Ferrante and Robert W. Hanning. (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 529.) The French of England Translation Series (FRETS), 11. Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2018. Pp. ix + 365. ISBN 978-0-86698-586-4.

When I began working on the vocabulary of Roman de Thèbes in the mid-1960s, there was little option but to use the SATF edition by Léopold Constans (2 vols, Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1890). Although basing his edition on MS S, one of the five complete manuscripts to have survived, Constans employed the editorial procedures of his time and thus produced what was virtually a new version of the poem. As the present translators state, his edition was a “considerable achievement, but not an easy text to use” (p. 28). I was fortunate that the first volume of Guy Raynaud de Lage’s two-volume CFMA edition appeared shortly after I began my work. Somewhat awkwardly, the second volume did not appear until 1968, just after I had completed it. The CFMA edition is based on MS C, and it amply fulfilled the criteria of a standard edition, which it could still claim to be. The first rival for this status appeared in 1995, when Francine Mora-Lebrun produced an edition of MS S, known as the Dispenser manuscript, in the Lettres gothiques series. A noticeable feature of the Raynaud de Lage and Mora-Lebrun editions is that the former contains 10562 lines of text and the latter 12059 lines (indeed, one of the salient aspects of the entire manuscript tradition of the Thèbes is the variation in the number of lines in each manuscript, from MS B with 10541 lines to MSS P and A with 13296 and 14626 lines respectively). Ferrante and Hanning have chosen for their translation the edition of MS S by Mora-Lebrun. (I myself am currently working on a translation of the Raynaud de Lage edition of MS C.)1

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In 1986 John Smartt Coley published an English translation of Constans’s version (New York and London: Garland Publishing), and readers have had to wait until now for a further English translation. Of the various possibilities for presenting a translation to the public (edition with facing prose translation, edition with facing line-by-line or facing verse translation, a prose, line-by-line, or verse translation without a facing text), Ferrante and Hanning have chosen a line-by-line translation without a facing text (my personal preferences are for an edition with a facing line-by-line translation or for a prose translation without an edition). This approach differs slightly from the translators’ much-used translation of the Lais of Marie de France (New York: Dutton, 1978), where they state that the translation is in “free verse” (p. 25).

The translation of the Thèbes starts with a crucial and often-quoted Prologue that sets out the author’s view of the nature of writing and identifies the listeners/readers at whom the story is aimed. The opening lines are translated as follows:

Anyone who is wise should not hide it

but should reveal his wisdom

so that when he departs from the world

4 he will always be remembered.

If Sir Homer and Sir Plato

and Virgil and Cicero

had hidden their wisdom

8 we would not know about them now.

That is why I will not keep my wisdom hidden

or suppress my learning,

but I will take pleasure in telling

12 something worth remembering.

Let them be silent, those who work at this craft;

Unless they are clerics or knights,

They can listen just as well

16 as asses can harp.

I shall not speak of tanners,

of peasants and shepherds,

but I shall tell you about two brothers

20 and relate their deeds.

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The presence of line numbers in fours may not appeal to all readers, but the translation copes well with the somewhat convoluted syntax of the Prologue. In v. 8, it may have been better to keep “parlé” as ‘spoken about’ rather than opting for ‘know about.’ Vv. 13-16 (‘Tout se taisent cil del mestier / si ne sont clerc ou chivaler: / ensement poent escouter / come li asnes a harper”) are difficult to translate. I would modify the present translators’ version slightly and say: “Let them refrain from this occupation [writing works such as this], unless they are clerics or knights. They are as capable of paying attention to me as an ass would be of appreciating the harp.”

The Thèbes is particularly well known for the section that deals with the trial of Daire le Roux (or Dares the Red) which begins at v. 8598. Here are the opening lines:

The first to speak was Dares the Red,

the prisoner’s father,

8600 who needed to communicate with the king;

he was a rich and powerful retainer.

“They’re asking too much from us,” he said.

“That border zone should be very important to you,

8604 for the land produces abundantly

and has many fine knights as well;

its people are formidable warriors.

It’s also the gateway to our land

8608 whenever the Pinsonards make war on us;

It’s always by using that entry point

That they’ve been able to lay waste to our countryside.

The translation again reads smoothly. In v. 8600 I would prefer ‘wanted’ rather than ‘needed’ for “volt” in the original, and ‘accustomed to’ rather than ‘able to’ for “solent” in v. 8610. The translation “retainer” for “vavassors” in v. 8601 is perhaps a bit too general for a word which indicates a ‘vassal holding sub-fiefs’ or a ‘nobleman of minor rank’. I prefer to retain the term “vavassor” in the translation, perhaps with a note. The rendering of “riches,” in the phrase “riches vavasours,” as ‘rich and powerful’ (v. 8601) is of interest, as it avoids the often tricky decision as to whether the emphasis of this adjective lies in wealth or in power.

Those who wish to read this translation of MS S alongside Mora-Lebrun’s edition of this manuscript are in for something of a surprise. The line numbers for this passage in the translation (vv. 8598-8610) are 33slightly different in the text (vv. 8600-8612). The discrepancy between the edition and the translation begins when line 448 of the text (“Qu’il n’i ait nul countredit”) is translated as “That Oedipus be our lord,” a translation that is then repeated as line 450. Thus line 448 of the text becomes line 449 of the translation. Shortly afterwards, lines 568-569 of the text become lines 569-571 of the translation. All in all, the Mora-Lebrun edition contains 12059 lines and the present translation 12055 lines. The result of this is that after line 448 anyone wishing to give references from both the original text and the translation will be obliged to supply two different figures.

There can be no doubt that the translation, as a whole, reads very well. Here are the final lines:

12040 So ended the war

over who should rule Thebes.

This is how the great and famous battle

for the city came to its conclusion,

12044 as did the animosity, so vicious and finally mortal

between the two brothers,

which left the kingdom without an heir,

as well as ravaged and laid waste.

12048 Many were the crises, the torments,

and the maledictions that descended on their children,

which their father had bequeathed to them,

prophesying them beforehand.

12052 Therefore, here’s my final advice to you: “Take good care

That you move through life justly and with moderation;

Do nothing that goes against nature,

Lest you come to a bitter end.”

In Mora-Lebrun’s edition this passage is lines 12044-12049. Once again, the translation reads well (I would have put a comma after ‘mortal’ at the end of line 12044).

The critical apparatus provided by the translators is excellent and comprehensive. Those who come to this translation after lengthy familiarization with the Raynaud de Lage edition (not Reynaud de Lage as it appears on p. 26, 28 and 29) will wish to know in what respects the MS S version differs from that found in MS C, which has 1493 fewer lines than S. This issue is dealt with partially in a section at the end of the Introduction that cites fourteen relatively short divergencies (p. 43-44). 34But earlier there is what is called a “Selective Comparison of MSS C and S” (p. 29-32, and by its very denseness this section makes out a good case for the need for the present translation, as it helps the reader to be aware of the divergent manuscript tradition of this work. As far as line 2000, there are no significant divergencies, but amongst those which, after that point, are of some substance is the Daire le Roux episode, which occupies 872 lines in C and 2101 lines in S (it is completely absent from the source text, Statius’s Thebaid). The discussion of this episode in the present volume (p. 29-30) makes a valuable contribution to scholarship on the Thèbes. A little later, when commenting on the final section of the poem, the translators are able to make the interesting observation that “the ending in MS S is much darker, lacking all satisfaction, and makes the audience aware of the irreparable damage done to societies by warfare” (p. 31).

Space does not permit comment on all the sections of the Introduction, which includes a comparison between Statius’s Thebaid and MS S, a comparison of characters, an examination of the concept of courtoisie feudal issues, a detailed description of the manuscript, etc.). A couple of comments. On p. 4 we are told that “the authors of the romans antiques are unknown to us,” which neglects to mention Benoît de Sainte-Maure, the author of the Roman de Troie. The earliest date for these romances is given as 1150, but if this was indeed the date of the Thèbes, it could not have been written for the court of Henry II and Eleanor, as is suggested on p. 4.

The nature of the textual tradition of the Roman de Thèbes makes it important that each edition and translation should contain a thorough Index of Proper Names, as the list of names varies from manuscript to manuscript. Even a cursory glance at the Index in Raynaud de Lage’s edition and that in the present translation reveals a number of discrepancies. The letter “A” alone reveals a surprising number of differences. The following people and places are mentioned in Raynaud de Lage’s text but not in the text of S: Agavé, Alcors, Almené, Almicle, Anirthas, Antheon, Anphigermye, Archage, Aristeus, Arondel (the name of a horse), Asfineon, Astrye, Athenonmye. The following names are found in the present translation, but not in the text of A: Abas, Acamas, Acherton, Achillor, Alan (name of a place), Alon, Amon, Amyntas, Anfors, Aquileia, Archivenin, Amphigenia, Argia, Azon. Comparisons 35between this translation and other versions of the story are not aided by the decision, in the pattern, “personal name + of / de + place name” (e.g. Salin de Pont, v. 9768), to list alphabetically only the personal name, not the place name. Thus, place names such as Amphigenia (in “Meleager of Amphigenia,” v. 10525), Baille (in “Melampus was the Duke of Baille,” v. 5742), and Sadocia (in “Daphneus of Sadocia,” v. 5815 are not listed alphabetically and are therefore hard to find (also Armenia, Anvers, Meletant, Sardinia, etc.). The entry for Frisia needs reworking. Five examples are given, but the first (v. 3658) occurs in the translation as “Phrygian,” and the third is “Phrygia” in the translation (v. 7204). There is no entry for Phrygia, but the Frisia entry concludes with a question mark: “[Phrygia?]” (to this question I would answer “yes”). New entries are also required for Alexandrine (v. 975), Algerian (v. 6367), Anuques (v. 10547), English (v. 7229), Ethiopia (v. 4338), Frozen Sea (v. 4330), Mont Cenis (v. 4911), Red Sea (v. 4331), Rome (vv. 4646, 9771), and Spain (vv. 5188, 5970). There is a substantial bibliography, albeit one that is rather heavily weighted towards studies of Henry Despenser, Bishop of Norwich and owner of MS S (for a detailed discussion of the manuscript and Henry’s career, see the Introduction, p. 32-43). The editions and translation section should include Aimé Petit’s French prose translation of MS C (Traductions des classiques français du Moyen Age, 44, Paris: Champion, 2002), and the discussion of women and love would have benefitted from the inclusion of Rosemarie Jones, The Theme of Love in the romans d’antiquité (London: The Modern Humanities Research Association, 1972).

Glyn S. Burgess

University of Liverpool