Tales of Vice and Virtue: The First Old French Vie des Pères

by Adrian P. Tudor

Here is presented for the first time a medieval text, the first Old French Vie des Peres. The Vie des Peres is a collective text comprising three branches and, at its fullest, over seventy individually enclosed pious tales and miracles. The first Vie - the first forty-one or forty-two tales - dates from the first third of the thirteenth century. It is a vitally significant, but hitherto neglected, part of the Old French canon. The tales are well written and offer glimpses of thirteenth-century life and spirituality.
The Vie des Peres will interest scholars engaged in the study of vernacular literature, codicology, lexicography, art history, theology and philology. Tales of Vice and Virtue is the first sustained analysis of the entire first Vie des Peres. It is a book which provides readers new to the text with detailed commentaries, offers abundant intertextual information for romance philologists, and suggests many new areas for further research.

612 pages, Hardcover

First published December 22, 2004