09: Reading for Leisure: Courts and Cities
traditions of writing and reading
ideals of individual creativity
Vernacular languages: local; native
Written languages in antiquity:
Latin; Greek
(Etruscan)
Celtic; Germanics
Non-Latin Alphabets
- Gothic: Bishop Ulfilas (ca. 311-383) Bible translation, alphabet. Codex Argenteus
- another page (color enhanced) codex argenteus
- Runes Oldest inscriptions ca 150 CE
- inscriptions
Christianization: Latin alphabet
early:
- Irish, German, Norse, Anglo-Saxon
- Copies: mainly from Carolingian era on (Charlemagne)
- monastic scribes
- example: Hildebrandslied, ca 830 (Fulda)
- example: Beowulf, late 10th c alt site
1000+ new courts, new culture
Development of court literature
Beinecke ms 229 fol 5r, Arthurian Romance
Beinecke, ms 229, fol 40r Walter Map, Le livre de Lancelot du Lac, Part III
influences:
- Germanic, Celtic traditions: Epics
- lay education: Mediterranean/Roman regions
- southern Europe: Arabic world: lyric poetry
- chivalric codes
11th c:
- the educated, virtuous prince-bishop
morality and fighting - technology innovation: stirrup: rise of horse-mounted fighting
Tristan BL Add MS 5474 fol. 9r
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Courts of southern France, former Carolingian regions
Southern French. (langue d’oc, Provencal)
ex: William IX of Aquitaine (1071-1127)
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itinerant singers
Lover as feudal lord, beloved lady
Love as refinement
Love of God as comparison
Genres: Romance, chanson de geste
Exx: Song of Roland; Arthurian legend
Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-75)
Early illustrated print edition of Decameron
Roman de la Rose manuscript at the Getty Museum
The Medieval Bookshelf: Getty Museum
Roman de la Rose Johns Hopkins and the Morgan Library, Digital Manuscript project
Yale Beinecke ms 229 Arthurian romances
More on plague doctors and their dress as compared with the Commedia dell’arte costume