CONGRESS CANCELED Storytelling the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (A Performance)

Medieval Institute, Western Michigan University

Description

The performance is an assortment of stories from the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, set within an overarching story that unifies them, and presents the historical circumstances of the collection’s and the surviving manuscript’s creation.

The Duke of Burgundy has order for a hundred tales to be narrated in his court. His courtiers and officials are rising up to the challenge. In the meticulously choreographed setting of one of the Duke’s fests, the stories were narrated in his presence, for the pleasure and entertainment of the entire court.

And when a hundred tales were told and done, the Duke’s most humble servant – by his own admission – gathered them all and wrote them down, and bound them in a manuscript.
He had it decorated with calligraphy and pictures painted in gold and precious colours; And he wrote a letter to the Duke, in dedication.

“To my most noble and dreaded liege, his grace the Duke of Burgundy, Brabant et cetera…as your most obedient servant, desiring, as is my duty, to comply with your wishes and projects to the best of my ability, I dare and presume to present to you this book, compiled and completed at your request and command. Most humbly I beseech you, to accept this work with pleasure. As it contains a hundred stories, and all of them are of recent memory, it can be called ‘a hundred new tales’. The Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles.”

Centuries passed. The Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles were written, published, read. But they were not told, not until now, and the remaining tales will have to wait for another time.

Bawdy, funny and usually containing vulgar language,these tales remain contemporary despite the chronological distance. Love and sex, agency and consent, power and its abuse, gender and identity, are emerging through these stories as pervasive issues that permeate the human experience. Kleio Pethainou

 
May 8th, 3:30 PM

CONGRESS CANCELED Storytelling the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles (A Performance)

Valley 2 LeFevre Lounge

The performance is an assortment of stories from the Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles, set within an overarching story that unifies them, and presents the historical circumstances of the collection’s and the surviving manuscript’s creation.

The Duke of Burgundy has order for a hundred tales to be narrated in his court. His courtiers and officials are rising up to the challenge. In the meticulously choreographed setting of one of the Duke’s fests, the stories were narrated in his presence, for the pleasure and entertainment of the entire court.

And when a hundred tales were told and done, the Duke’s most humble servant – by his own admission – gathered them all and wrote them down, and bound them in a manuscript.
He had it decorated with calligraphy and pictures painted in gold and precious colours; And he wrote a letter to the Duke, in dedication.

“To my most noble and dreaded liege, his grace the Duke of Burgundy, Brabant et cetera…as your most obedient servant, desiring, as is my duty, to comply with your wishes and projects to the best of my ability, I dare and presume to present to you this book, compiled and completed at your request and command. Most humbly I beseech you, to accept this work with pleasure. As it contains a hundred stories, and all of them are of recent memory, it can be called ‘a hundred new tales’. The Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles.”

Centuries passed. The Cent Nouvelles Nouvelles were written, published, read. But they were not told, not until now, and the remaining tales will have to wait for another time.

Bawdy, funny and usually containing vulgar language,these tales remain contemporary despite the chronological distance. Love and sex, agency and consent, power and its abuse, gender and identity, are emerging through these stories as pervasive issues that permeate the human experience. Kleio Pethainou