ABSTRACT
At the epicentre of the many invigorating changes marking the ‘twelfth-century renaissance’ in Europe – from its innovations and importations in philosophy, literature, education, science, historiography, architecture and law to the founding and expansion of new religious establishments and dissident movements, along with the burgeoning of travel, trade, urban growth and republican aspiration – France and Occitania witnessed the unprecedented eruption of a self-confident and dynamic lay culture. Its inventions which were perhaps to have the most powerful impact in geographical space and historical time were those ideals still familiar to us, for better or for worse, of chivalry and courtly love. Intimately bound up with notions of what it meant to be a (noble) man or woman, these articulated far-reaching renegotiations of gender identities and relations. The prolific new literatures in the vernacular tongues of oïl and oc, while not the only manifestations of these ideals and cultural tensions, provide a particularly rich and subtle seam of source material for the historian: an opportunity to gauge some of the impact on aristocratic lay sensibilities of differences and disputes, for example, between Church and laity over sexual and marriage practices. Although largely written by men with male interests at heart, the literature allows some space for women’s voices. These may be heard directly, through a small minority of women writers. But they also reverberate through male authors’ awareness of women listeners among their audiences, whom they often perceive as a problematic presence, and through the openness and ambiguities of texts which provide space for divergent readings (Krueger 1993). Though medieval historians are often inclined to avoid literary sources or sources seemingly too tainted with literariness (Gillingham 1995: 34–7), these are in one fundamental respect no different from other written records. Whether one is dealing with a romance, a medical textbook, a chronicle or a charter, there is a document to evaluate in terms of its conventions, its conditions and purposes of production and reception, and the presence or absence of corroborative evidence. Literature, however, is particularly good at providing details of daily life and contemporary sensibility, provided these are analysed in the context of tendencies to idealise or stereotype; its themes, repetitions and silences can be used to diagnose the preoccupations and unresolved social tensions of audiences and authors; and its vocabulary and representations provide 282valuable tools for tracing shifts in ways of thinking. Moreover, vernacular literature provides a precious counterbalance to the predominance of Latin and hence primarily ecclesiastical written material.
