1. Medieval
The manuscripts that transmit medieval French literature are extremely varied. They range from small, undecorated, inexpensive productions—possibly designed, in some cases, for use by itinerant performers—to large-format, lavishly illustrated books commissioned by members of the high aristocracy. Some contain but a single text, though many are anthologies; the latter range from extremely diverse miscellanies to carefully organized collections of a single author or literary genre. The earliest surviving example of Old French poetry is the Séquence de sainte Eulalie, transcribed in a Latin manuscript of the late 9th c. Only a modest number of manuscripts written in French have survived, however, from before the 13th c., at which time vernacular manuscript production increased significantly. It was not replaced by the printing press until the 16th c.
One important category of Old French manuscripts is the chansonnier, which may be devoted to the songs of the troubadours or trouvères, to motets, or to compositions in the lyric formes flxes. Only a small fraction of troubadour songs are preserved with music, but most chansonniers in the langue d'oïl [see Langue D'oc] include musical settings. Anthologies of the trouvères and troubadours are usually arranged by author, often with conventionalized author portraits. In addition, troubadour manuscripts commonly contain the prose vidas (biographies of the poets) and razos (narrative explanations of the genesis of a given song). These texts provide commentary, albeit fictional, on the poems and create a vivid sense of the authorial persona. The incidence of variant readings among the various manuscripts of a given song is extremely high for both the troubadour and the trouvère corpora. This state of affairs can be attributed to the fact that the earliest surviving chansonniers post-date the earliest songs by over a century. The texts that have come down to us thus reflect the accumulated effects of variations introduced by performers and perhaps by scribes during a period of largely oral transmission. The phenomenon of textual variation is generally known by the term mouvance, made standard by Paul Zumthor.
Narrative anthologies, though sometimes miscellaneous, are often governed by thematic or generic considerations, resulting in anthologies of saints' lives, of fabliaux, and so on. Collections of texts on a given topic are sometimes arranged in such a way as to create a chronological progression throughout the manuscript. Chansons de geste, for example, are typically compiled into large narrative cycles. Similarly, compilations of the romans d'antiquité provide an extended romance coverage of ancient history, sometimes completed by examples of Arthurian romance. As in the lyric tradition, narrative texts are subject to mouvance. Some variants no doubt derive from a practice of oral reading or recitation, reflecting a performer's efforts to adapt the text to his or her audience; others can be attributed to scribal error. In many cases, however, scribes themselves exercised editorial functions, choosing to expand, abridge, or otherwise modify the texts they copied. Copyists might even consult more than one manuscript of a text, preparing a composite version.
The path from manuscript to modern edition entails numerous problems that must be solved by the editor. Discussion of editorial practices is generally expressed in terms of a debate between two schools of textual criticism, identified with the great philologists Joseph Bédier and Karl Lachmann respectively. The Bédieriste editor favours a conservative edition of the manuscript judged as best—or even parallel editions of every surviving manuscript—on the grounds that this method reproduces an authentic medieval text and not a hypothetical re-creation. The Lachmannian editor, on the other hand, aims for a reconstruction of the original text that would have given rise to the existing manuscript versions, arguing that the words of the author are to be preferred, whenever possible, over those of copyists. Many editors seek a middle path between these two extremes, balancing an effort to identify and correct errors and scribal alterations against a need to present a text that accurately reflects the surviving manuscripts. The characteristics of a given text—the number, date, and quality of its manuscripts and the extent of variation among them—are crucial in determining the procedures best suited to its edition.
Scribal editorial work was not limited to the compilation of anthologies and the transcription of a faithful or altered copy of the text. Scribes also had to decide where to introduce breaks in the text by means of enlarged ornamental initials, sometimes containing narrative illustrations. Some copyists employed a hierarchical system of initials of different sizes and degrees of ornamentation in order to indicate a range of divisions and subdivisions within the text. Scribes also devised programmes of rubrication, ranging from terse indications of the title or the main topic addressed in individual sections to lengthy explanations in verse or prose. Rubrics of the latter sort provide a running commentary that guides the reader through the text. With long texts, such as the Roman de la Rose or the Perceforest, rubrics might be recopied at the beginning of the manuscript to form a Table of Contents.
Scribes were also involved in the illustration of manuscripts, since it was up to them to leave spaces for miniatures; and the rubrics that served as captions for the illustrations may have served as a guide to the artist. The choice of whether or not to illustrate a given text, however, would be informed by a variety of factors, including not only the judgement of the scribe but also that of workshop artists, as well as the wishes of the patron, his or her financial resources, and the availability of models from which miniatures could be copied. Some texts, such as the Roman de la Rose and Guillaume de Degulleville's Pelerinage de vie humaine, quickly developed standard iconographic programmes, although individual manuscripts do show some variation and an individual artist could always choose to create new images. Many texts, however, never developed a standard iconography, and the choice of which passages to illustrate and how to represent a given scene may vary widely from one manuscript to another.
It is not until the 14th c. that one finds substantial evidence for the involvement of vernacular authors in manuscript production. Earlier examples do exist. Gautier de Coinci clearly conceived his Miracles de Nostre Dame (1214-27) as an illustrated compendium; but as a monastic poet he would have had both the education and the resources to oversee manuscript production. Aristocratic poets similarly possessed the means of acting as both author and patron, exerting some control over the written production of their works; examples of this phenomenon are Joinville's exposition on the Credo (1250-1), clearly conceived as an illustrated text, and the songs of Thibaut de Champagne (1201-53), which, according to the Grandes Chroniques, were written down at his instigation. In the 14th c., however, there are manuscripts devoted to the works of a single non-noble author and evidently compiled with at least some degree of supervision by the author: e.g. the collected dits of Watriquet de Couvin and the more diverse anthology codices of Guillaume de Machaut, Jean Froissart, and Christine de Pizan.
Manuscripts are a source of information about the interests and reactions of medieval readers, recorded in marginal annotations. The most common annotation is ‘Nota’, which generally identifies proverbs or moral teachings; from this practice it is clear that medieval readers placed a high priority on a text's didactic content, and that they responded to the use of proverbs and formulaic discourse. The indication ‘Nota’ could, however, also be used to mark humorous passages that parody sententious discourse. More elaborate glosses, though not common in vernacular manuscripts, are occasionally used to identify historical figures; to cite Latin sources or analogues; to enter a proverb that serves to comment on the text; or simply to record a personal reaction such as agreement, surprise, or sorrow. From the number of Latin glosses it is clear that the audience for vernacular literature was by no means limited to the unlettered.
The evidence of library inventories, colophons, inscriptions, and wills confirms that manuscripts of Old and Middle French literature were owned by men and women of the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie, and the clergy, as well as by ecclesiastical and university libraries. Through a study of the many features of the manuscripts—organization, textual variants, illustrations, rubrication, annotations, and patterns of ownership—one can trace not only the history of the book in the pre-printing era, but also the reception and interpretation of French literature by generations of medieval readers.
— Sylvia Huot
Bibliography
- A. Foulet and M. B. Speer, On Editing Old French Texts (1979)
- S. Huot, From Song to Book (1987)
- J. Lemaire, Introduction à la codicologie (1989)
2. Post-Medieval
Even after the generalization of printing, manuscripts continued to be widely used in certain circumstances for the transmission of literary works. Manuscripts circulated in the salons [see Preciosity]. The great majority of Latin plays written and performed in Jesuit colleges in the 17th and 18th centuries exist only in manuscript. Similarly a work such as père Houbigant's ‘Traité des études’ circulated in manuscript copies in the Oratorian colleges. A particularly important development was the use of manuscripts for the circulation of subversive writing [see Clandestine Manuscripts].
— Peter France
