Author : Doris Earnshaw
Publisher : Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 200 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (49 download)
Book Synopsis The Female Voice in Medieval Romance Lyric by : Doris Earnshaw
Download or read book The Female Voice in Medieval Romance Lyric written by Doris Earnshaw and published by Peter Lang Incorporated, International Academic Publishers. This book was released on 1988 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The spontaneous, audacious voice of the speaking woman in medieval chansons de femme has delighted and puzzled critics for many years. Some call the voice 'folkloric' and others claim it is a courtly convention. This new sociolinguistic study examines the poetics of female speech within a dominantly male voiced body of poetry. Using for material the extant lyrics in Mozarabic Spanish, Galician-Portuguese, Provençal, Old French and Italian, the book first discovers formal patterns of fragmentation and incorporation. Then the dramatic persona of the female speaker is identified by cultural characteristics of speech style, economic class and political position. Finally, the conventions that govern the use of female speech are shown to pre-date the medieval period and persist to our own time.