Le Lai de l'Oiselet: An Old French Poem of the Thirteenth Century. Edition and Critical Study

1990 ◽  
Vol 80 (5) ◽  
pp. i ◽  
Author(s):  
Lenora D. Wolfgang
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Old French ◽  
Critical Study

Kilwa Dynastic Historiography: A Critical Study

1979 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 177-207 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elias Saad
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Critical Study ◽  
Arabic Version ◽  
Portuguese Version ◽  
Recent Debate ◽  
Dynastic Politics

One of the unresolved problems in African historiography concerns the Arabic and Portuguese versions of the so-called Kilwa Chronicle. Scholars who have used these sixteenth-century sources have tended to assume that the Portuguese version, which is essentially a list of the kings of Kilwa up to around 1500, is a transcription of the Arabic version known under the title of Kitab al-Sulwa. In the recent debate between Freeman-Grenville and Chittick, this assumption has created serious difficulties because the Portuguese account mentions kings who are omitted in the Kitab. Freeman-Grenville attempted to resolve the difficulty by hypothesizing that the work was defectively abridged in the extant nineteenth-century copy. Relying on the regnal durations in the Portuguese account, he computed the dynastic chronology of Kilwa backwards to the tenth century. Subsequently, Chittick's excavations did not show Kilwa important enough to have been the site of a kingdom prior to the thirteenth century. This became the basis for an alternative explanation which denied the existence of gaps or omissions in the Kitab. Chittick argued instead that the longer list of kings in the Portuguese account may have resulted from dovetailing two sources together and duplicating their information.The present paper calls on genealogical evidence overlooked by both scholars which demonstrates that the divergence between the two sources results from their varying perspectives on the dynastic politics and succession disputes. First, the Portuguese account, though occurring in João de Barros’ Da Asia written about 1552, may represent an impromptu composition given to the Portuguese during their occupation of Kilwa in 1505–12.

scholarly journals Song and the Soundscape of Old French Romance

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Dillon
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Old French ◽  
Sound Studies ◽  
Chretien De Troyes ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Chrétien De Troyes ◽  
Lyric Tradition ◽  
Old French Romance

This chapter examines the presence of song and sound in romance, with a particular focus on the traditions of Old French romance from its incarnation in the 1170s, in the works of Chrétien de Troyes, to the earliest examples of romances interpolated with song (romans à chansons) which date from the first decades of the thirteenth century. Romance’s emergence coincided with a period of extraordinary creativity in the realm of vernacular song, most notably with the emergence of a northern lyric tradition of the trouvères, with the continued cultivation of their Occitan inspiration in the lyrics of the troubadours, and with the earliest efforts at codification of both, in songbooks or chansonniers, the earliest examples of which date from the 1230s. Drawing on approaches from musicology, literary studies, and sound studies, my chapter explores how sound manifests in this tradition, and proposes ways to listen to romance. Listening to romance in turn permits new ways to reframe song culture, particularly in the period prior to its notated codification, and the chapter has implications, too, for what musicology may learn from the sonic aspect of romance.

Rethinking Medieval Romance Verb Second

2020 ◽  
pp. 348-367
Author(s):  
Sam Wolfe
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Old French ◽  
Romance Languages ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Compelling Evidence ◽  
Verb Second ◽  
Medieval Romance ◽  
Corpus Data

This chapter offers a reappraisal of the place of Medieval Romance languages within the V2 typology based on novel corpus data. A review of the available primary and secondary evidence provides compelling evidence that the Medieval Romance languages considered (French, Occitan, Sicilian, Venetian, and Spanish) were V2 languages, with V-to-C movement and XP-merger in the left periphery. The second half of the chapter focuses in detail on Old Sicilian and Old French, arguing that although both show certain commonalities, the height of the V2 bottleneck is distinct with thirteenth-century French showing a stricter V2 syntax than Old Sicilian. This is linked to the former’s status as a high V2 language with a locus for V2 on Force, as opposed to Fin where the constraint is operative in Sicilian.

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