The rapid rise of vernacular literature in medieval France,
within a culture which continued to acknowledge Latin as its
vehicular language, is a fact that literary historians tend too
easily to take for granted. Within a relatively short period,
stretching roughly from the end of the eleventh century to the
thirteenth century, French and Occitan literatures acquired an
output and a level of sophistication that made them the leading
models for other European literatures. New genres and new subject
matters appear one after the other; new ideologies (such as the
concept of love developed by the troubadours) are first expressed
in vernacular creations; and even learned Latin authors soon feel
obliged to take notice of these developments.
Should we describe this astonishing chapter of cultural history
as the development of a “lay”, or
“profane”, literature alongside a Church dominated
learned and religious one, or as the emancipation of vernacular
literature from the tutorship of the Church? Is the borderline
between “lay” and “religious” texts and
genres really as clear-cut as some literary histories would make us
believe? How then did these new genres of written literature come
into being in a culture in which the Church held the monopoly on
education, including training in writing? Did the Church as an
institution play any role in the birth and expansion of vernacular
literature?
In the present volume, specialists from the disciplines of
linguistics, literature, history and musicology address the various
aspects of this complex of questions. The examples studied here are
witnesses not only to a constant
interaction between lay and religious cultures but also to the
productive tension that resulted from the particular situation of
the Church in medieval France.