Medieval French Literary Culture Abroad

Medieval French Literary Culture Abroad takes a new approach to French literary history by giving due weight to the considerable body of material in French that was composed or that circulated outside France. It therefore proposes an alternative to traditional accounts, which treat medieval French literature primarily as a manifestation of an emerging national culture closely linked to the kingdom of France, to its capital, Paris, and to the French royal court. The book is also distinctive in offering close readings of texts in their manuscript contexts (rather than in sanitised, dehistoricised modern editions), and accordingly includes more than 20 reproductions of manuscript pages.