In Her Own Words: Twelfth-Century French Women's Voices in Performance (A Performance Roundtable)
Sponsoring Organization(s)
Special Session
Organizer Name
Simonetta Cochis
Organizer Affiliation
Transylvania Univ.
Presider Name
Simonetta Cochis
Paper Title 1
Participant
Presenter 1 Name
Dorothy Gilbert
Presenter 1 Affiliation
Univ. of California-Berkeley
Paper Title 2
Participant
Presenter 2 Name
Julie Human
Presenter 2 Affiliation
Univ. of Kentucky
Paper Title 3
Participant
Presenter 3 Name
Yvonne LeBlanc
Presenter 3 Affiliation
Independent Scholar
Paper Title 4
Participant
Presenter 4 Name
Tamara Bentley Caudill
Presenter 4 Affiliation
Jacksonville Univ.
Start Date
10-5-2018 1:30 PM
Session Location
Valley 2 Garneau Lounge
Description
In this "Performance Roundtable," presenters perform a short text and give a brief commentary on their performance as a lens to highlight / analyze women’s voices.
Women’s voices in twelfth-century narrative romances and in lyric compositions typically lie flat on a page, read in silence by modern solitary readers. This session lifts these voices off the page by giving them a physical presence through performance. The practice of the modern performance of medieval texts, while it does not purport to provide an accurate reconstruction of the medieval practice of courtly dramatic reading and performance, does nevertheless function as a heuristic device for a clearer understanding of the inflections and nuances of textual women’s voices. The shared experience generates not just individual but also collective, integrative interpretations. They serve as a mediation, similar to the mediation that occurred for medieval audiences, who, as Evelyn Birge Vitz indicates in Orality and Performance, “cannot help but have been affected by the performers’ interpretation” of a narrative text.
In this session, participants will perform a short passage of their choice and also offer a brief commentary concerning their performance choices and how these may serve as a basis for analysis and pedagogy. Special consideration will be given to scholars who use performance or other interdisciplinary approaches to early medieval French works. It will attract scholars in narratology, musicology, performance studies, and women’s studies. Performers will be asked to choose passages, either lyric or narrative, which contain direct address, and which represent the voices of women written by male or female authors, and women in diverse societal roles.
Simonetta Cochis
In Her Own Words: Twelfth-Century French Women's Voices in Performance (A Performance Roundtable)
Valley 2 Garneau Lounge
In this "Performance Roundtable," presenters perform a short text and give a brief commentary on their performance as a lens to highlight / analyze women’s voices.
Women’s voices in twelfth-century narrative romances and in lyric compositions typically lie flat on a page, read in silence by modern solitary readers. This session lifts these voices off the page by giving them a physical presence through performance. The practice of the modern performance of medieval texts, while it does not purport to provide an accurate reconstruction of the medieval practice of courtly dramatic reading and performance, does nevertheless function as a heuristic device for a clearer understanding of the inflections and nuances of textual women’s voices. The shared experience generates not just individual but also collective, integrative interpretations. They serve as a mediation, similar to the mediation that occurred for medieval audiences, who, as Evelyn Birge Vitz indicates in Orality and Performance, “cannot help but have been affected by the performers’ interpretation” of a narrative text.
In this session, participants will perform a short passage of their choice and also offer a brief commentary concerning their performance choices and how these may serve as a basis for analysis and pedagogy. Special consideration will be given to scholars who use performance or other interdisciplinary approaches to early medieval French works. It will attract scholars in narratology, musicology, performance studies, and women’s studies. Performers will be asked to choose passages, either lyric or narrative, which contain direct address, and which represent the voices of women written by male or female authors, and women in diverse societal roles.
Simonetta Cochis