The Interlingual Poetics of Chaucer's Book of the Duchess: English, French, or Franglais?
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Special Session
Organizer Name
Jamie C. Fumo
Organizer Affiliation
Florida State Univ.
Presider Name
Jamie C. Fumo
Paper Title 1
"Counterfeit" Antiquity: Chaucer's Book of the Duchess and Its French Contexts
Presenter 1 Name
Elizaveta Strakhov
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Marquette Univ.
Paper Title 2
"Je ne sui pas Orpheüs": Repetition and the Trap of Lyric in Chaucer's Book of the Duchess and Froissart's Paradys d'amour
Presenter 2 Name
Benjamin S. W. Barootes
Presenter 2 Affiliation
McGill Univ.
Paper Title 3
Respondent
Presenter 3 Name
Jamie C. Fumo
Start Date
12-5-2016 7:30 PM
Session Location
Bernhard 106
Description
The problem of interlingualism—being between languages—has preoccupied scholarship on Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess for more than a century and has gained new relevance in light of advances in our understanding of late-medieval insular vernacularity. As the first poem written in English to imbibe and rechannel the French dit amoureux tradition, and as a narrative that richly evokes shifts among linguistic registers and cultural perspectives, the Book of the Duchess has long been considered Chaucer’s most “French” poem, even as it inaugurates a signature Chaucerian tradition of “English literature.” This session explores how the Book of the Duchess models and intervenes in the cultural dialogue between Englishness and Frenchness, how it imagines a collaborative model of authorship across vernaculars, and to what degree it can be understood as both “multilingual” and seminally “English.”
Jamie Fumo
The Interlingual Poetics of Chaucer's Book of the Duchess: English, French, or Franglais?
Bernhard 106
The problem of interlingualism—being between languages—has preoccupied scholarship on Chaucer’s Book of the Duchess for more than a century and has gained new relevance in light of advances in our understanding of late-medieval insular vernacularity. As the first poem written in English to imbibe and rechannel the French dit amoureux tradition, and as a narrative that richly evokes shifts among linguistic registers and cultural perspectives, the Book of the Duchess has long been considered Chaucer’s most “French” poem, even as it inaugurates a signature Chaucerian tradition of “English literature.” This session explores how the Book of the Duchess models and intervenes in the cultural dialogue between Englishness and Frenchness, how it imagines a collaborative model of authorship across vernaculars, and to what degree it can be understood as both “multilingual” and seminally “English.”
Jamie Fumo