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Debate and Dialogue: Alain Chartier in His Cultural Context
In early humanist France two debating traditions converge: one literary and vernacular, one intellectual and conducted mainly via Latin epistles. Debate and Dialogue demonstrates how the two fuse in the vernacular verse debates of Alain Chartier, secretary and notary at the court of Charles VI, and later, Charles VII. In spite of considerable contemporary praise for Chartier, his work has remained largely neglected by modern critics. This study shows how Chartier participates in a movement that invests a vernacular poetic with moral and political significance, inspiring such social engagements as the fifteenth-century poetic exchange known as the Querelle de la Belle Dame sans mercy .
Emma Cayley sets Chartier in the context of a late-medieval debating climate through the use of a new model of participatory poetics which she terms the collaborative debating community . This is a dynamic and generative social grouping based on Brian Stock's model of the textual community , as well as Pierre Bourdieu's sociological categories of field , habitus , and capital . This dialectical model takes account of the socio-cultural context of literary production, and suggests the fundamentally competitive yet collaborative nature of late-medieval poetry. Cayley draws an analogy here between literary debates and game-playing, engaging with the game theory of Johan Huizinga and Roger Caillois, and discusses the manuscript context of such literary debates as the materialization of this poetic game. The collaborative debating community postulated affords unique insights into the dynamics of late-medieval compositional and reading practices.
Emma Cayley sets Chartier in the context of a late-medieval debating climate through the use of a new model of participatory poetics which she terms the collaborative debating community . This is a dynamic and generative social grouping based on Brian Stock's model of the textual community , as well as Pierre Bourdieu's sociological categories of field , habitus , and capital . This dialectical model takes account of the socio-cultural context of literary production, and suggests the fundamentally competitive yet collaborative nature of late-medieval poetry. Cayley draws an analogy here between literary debates and game-playing, engaging with the game theory of Johan Huizinga and Roger Caillois, and discusses the manuscript context of such literary debates as the materialization of this poetic game. The collaborative debating community postulated affords unique insights into the dynamics of late-medieval compositional and reading practices.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published September 28, 2006
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April 26, 2021
A very interesting book in dire need of an editor. It's a four star book for the scholarship. It's a one star book for the editing.
It starts with an introduction summarizing what is going to be covered, and then chapter 1 starts with five pages of introductory material that rehashes the introduction, explicitly says it's rehashing the introduction, helpfully provides a footnote telling you exactly what pages of the introduction it's rehashing and then, finally, mercifully gets to the meat of the chapter. Chapter 2 has an introduction that is more or less identical to chapter 1's, and chapter 3's is more or less identical to chapter 2's, and so on. None of the introductory material needed to be repeated and all of it could have been folded into the introduction to the book (where most of it was first introduced to us anyway anyway) or cut entirely without losing anything except aggravation.
But the needless introductory verbiage doesn't stop with actual introductions: it goes down to the sentence level, where there will be a sentence that says "Scholar X is working on Y" followed immediately by another sentence about how scholar X says Z about Y, with names and citations given. ALL THE TIME.
This was an incredibly frustrating book and now that I've finished it, I'm unlikely to ever consult it again, simply because the aggravation of sifting through a haystack of blather to find whatever lucid point I want to verify isn't worth it.
It starts with an introduction summarizing what is going to be covered, and then chapter 1 starts with five pages of introductory material that rehashes the introduction, explicitly says it's rehashing the introduction, helpfully provides a footnote telling you exactly what pages of the introduction it's rehashing and then, finally, mercifully gets to the meat of the chapter. Chapter 2 has an introduction that is more or less identical to chapter 1's, and chapter 3's is more or less identical to chapter 2's, and so on. None of the introductory material needed to be repeated and all of it could have been folded into the introduction to the book (where most of it was first introduced to us anyway anyway) or cut entirely without losing anything except aggravation.
But the needless introductory verbiage doesn't stop with actual introductions: it goes down to the sentence level, where there will be a sentence that says "Scholar X is working on Y" followed immediately by another sentence about how scholar X says Z about Y, with names and citations given. ALL THE TIME.
This was an incredibly frustrating book and now that I've finished it, I'm unlikely to ever consult it again, simply because the aggravation of sifting through a haystack of blather to find whatever lucid point I want to verify isn't worth it.
Displaying 1 of 1 review