Laurie Shepard – författare

This text chronicles a change in epistolary persuasion in the 1230's, crystallized at the imperial chancery of Frederick II, Emperor from 1220-1250. There, traditional appeals, premised on authority and harmony, were challenged by letters in which historical circumstances functioned as an integral part of the strategy of persuasion. Based on the close reading of "Artes Dictandi", as well as a series of letters issued from the papal and imperial chanceries, this book explores the theory and practice of medieval letter-writing. Letters are evaluated as verbal acts intended to persuade, with the public as the ultimate arbiter of success. The author argues that the form, proportion and style of letters were contoured by ideology.

This work offers an edition and translation of some 30 poems by the trobairitz, a remarkable group of women poets from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, who composed in the style and language of the troubadours. Introductory essays and notes by specialists in the field place the poems in literary, linguistic, historical, social and cultural contexts. English versions facing Occitan texts elucidate the original language and themes, while supplying poems that can be enjoyed by contemporary readers . The varied corpus includes love songs (cansos), debate poems (tensos), political satires (sirventes) and other lyrical sub-genres (including dawn-song, lament, ballad, chanson de mal mariee). To represent the range of female voices available in the lyric corpus of the troubadours, the editors have selected songs consistently attributed to historically documented women poets, as well as songs whose authorship is open to question. The latter may be presented by the manuscripts with or without a named woman poet, but all offer female speakers personae characteristic of troubadour poets in general.

This text chronicles a change in epistolary persuasion in the 1230's, crystallized at the imperial chancery of Frederick II, Emperor from 1220-1250. There, traditional appeals, premised on authority and harmony, were challenged by letters in which historical circumstances functioned as an integral part of the strategy of persuasion. Based on the close reading of "Artes Dictandi", as well as a series of letters issued from the papal and imperial chanceries, this book explores the theory and practice of medieval letter-writing. Letters are evaluated as verbal acts intended to persuade, with the public as the ultimate arbiter of success. The author argues that the form, proportion and style of letters were contoured by ideology.

The question of what medieval "courtliness" was, both as a literary influence and as a historical "reality", is debated in this volume.The concept of courtliness forms the theme of this collection of essays. Focused on works written in the Francophone world between the twelfth and fifteenth centuries, they examine courtliness as both an historical privilege and aliterary ideal, and as a concept that operated on and was informed by complex social and economic realities. Several essays reveal how courtliness is subject to satire or is the subject of exhortation in works intended for noblemen and women, not to mention ambitious bourgeois. Others, more strictly literary in their focus, explore the witty, thoughtful and innovative responses of writers engaged in the conscious process of elevating the new vernacular culture through the articulation of its complexities and contradictions. The volume as a whole, uniting philosophical, theoretical, philological, and cultural approaches, demonstrates that medieval "courtliness" is an ideal that fascinates us to this day. It is thus a fitting tribute to the scholarship of Matilda Tomaryn Bruckner, in its exploration of the prrofound and wide-ranging ideas that define her contribution to the field.DANIEL E O'SULLIVAN is Associate Professor of French at the University of Mississippi; LAURIE SHEPHARD is Associate Professor of Italian at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts.Contributors: Peter Haidu, Donald Maddox, Michel-André Bossy, Kristin Burr, Joan Tasker Grimbert, David Hult, Virgine Greene, Logan Whalen, Evelyn Birge Vitz, Elizabeth W. Poe, Daniel E. O'Sullivan, William Schenck, Nadia Margolis, Laine Doggett, E. Jane Burns, Nancy FreemanRegalado, Laurie Shephard, Sarah White