The Roman de Fauvel and Its Background
Instructors: Nancy Freeman Regalado (NYU, French), Edward Roesner (NYU, Music), Elizabeth A.R. Brown (ex officio, CUNY Graduate Center)
 
Thursday 3:30-5:30, Silver, Room 318
 
The Roman de Fauvel is a long  satiric poem concerned with the nature of kingship, political corruption, and the moral ills besetting medieval French society. Dated 1310 and 1314, its two books describe the career of Fauvel, a nefarious stallion who embodies the vices, and who dominates the French monarchy and pollutes the nation. The most important surviving copy of the roman is a manuscript prepared by a group of clerks in the French royal administration, perhaps in 1316 or a year or two later: this document virtually doubles the length of the original poem and adds more than 150 pieces of music, many of them among the most complex and elaborate to survive from the middle ages, and 77 illuminations by one of the most productive and imaginative artists of the time. These work together with the literary text to offer an extraordinarily vivid witness to early 14th-century learning, creativity, and culture. This manuscript will be the subject of the course.
 
The seminar will be directed by specialists in 13th and 14th-century literature and music, and in the politics of the late Capetian monarchy; it is likely that other faculty from both inside and outside NYU will attend from time to time. It is open to students interested in any area of medieval studies, including literature, music, art, philosophy and theology, and cultural history generally. We will look at the manuscript from many vantage points, at its planning and execution, the sources drawn upon by its compilers, how its borrowed materials were adapted to fit them to the Fauvel theme, its "message," the political circumstances that prompted its creation (the adultery scandal and crisis of royal succession in the mid 1310s, the Avignon papacy and the trial of the Templars, the real-life models for the figure of Fauvel, and much else), and its place as a witness to the rapidly changing expressive cultures of the later middle ages. A working knowledge of French and a rudimentary ability to read music are desirable but not necessary: students will be expected to bring the tools of their own fields and their own expertise to bear on the many questions raised by this manuscript, and to be willing to engage with the methodologies and bibliographies of their sister disciplines in what we intend to be a thoroughly interdisciplinary inquiry. The course will be taught for the most part as a conversation among the participants, with occasional presentations by the students and with a formal paper due at the end of term.
 
Note to students in French:   Students with no previous training in the Middle Ages or in manuscript study will find that this course is an exhilarating and thorough-going introduction to medieval literature, to working with material book culture, and to the experience of interdisciplinarity.  There are many projects to be undertaken in this course that will suit beginners as well as advanced students while enabling you to participate in a remarkable multi-level conversation.  Please call Professor Regalado if you are interested and have any questions (212/473-5556).