Skip to main content

Verse and Music

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
  • 160 Accesses

Part of the book series: The New Middle Ages ((TNMA))

Abstract

This chapter examines the treatment of the Samson story in the verse summary known as the Poème anglo-normand sur l’ancien testament. The Poème recasts the story within the generic frame of Old French vernacular romance. It is an adaptation of biblical material that privileges the narrative over the doctrinal elements. Part 2 analyses the Poème’s possible use of Peter Abelard’s planctus. The twelfth-century planctus on Samson inspired the thirteenth-century lyric drama Samson, dux fortissime, which is discussed in the last part of this chapter.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   39.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Hardcover Book
USD   54.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Bibliography

  • Adams, Tracy. “Crossing Generic Boundaries: The Clever Courtly Lady”, Essays in Medieval Studies, 21.1 (2004): 81–96.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aubrey, Elizabeth. “Reconsidering ‘High Style’ and ‘Low Style’ in Medieval Song”, Journal of Music Theory, 52 (2008): 75–122.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bell, Thomas J. Peter Abelard After Marriage: The Spiritual Direction of Heloise and Her Nuns Through Liturgical Song. Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian Publications, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bennett, Adelaide. “David’s Written and Pictorial Biography in a Thirteenth-Century French Psalter-Hours”, in Between the Picture and the Word, ed. Colum Hourihane, 122–140. Princeton NJ: Index of Christian Art, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blatt, Franz, ed. The Latin Josephus, I: Introduction and Text: The Antiquities Books I–V (Acta Jutlandica, Humanistik Series 44). Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1958.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bourgain, Pascale. “La Honte du héros”, in Nova de veteribus: mittel- und neulateinische Studien für Paul Gerhard Schmidt, ed. Andreas Bihrer and Elisabeth Stein, 385–400. Munich: Saur, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  • Brown, Catherine. Contrary Things: Exegesis, Dialectic, and the Poetics of Didacticism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  • Buckley, Ann. “Abelard’s planctus and Old French Lais: Melodic Style and Formal Structure”, in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, ed. Marc Stewart and David Wulstan, 49–59. Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “Abelard’s Planctus virginum Israel super filia Iepte Galadite and Li lais des puceles”, in Études de langue et de littérature médiévales offertes à Peter T. Ricketts à l’occasion de son 70ème anniversaire, ed. Ann Buckley and Dominique Billy, 545–569. Turnhout: Brepols, 2010.

    Google Scholar 

  • Cheung-Salisbury, Matthew. “The Austinian Performative Utterance and the Thomistic Doctrine of the Sacraments”, in Performing Medieval Text, ed. Ardis Butterfield, Pauline Souleau, and Henry Hope. Oxford: MHRA and Legenda, 2017.

    Google Scholar 

  • Coates, Alan. English Medieval Books: The Reading Abbey Collections from Foundation to Dispersal. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  • Colton, Lisa. “Reconstructing Cluniac Music”, Early Music, 34 (2006): 675–677.

    Google Scholar 

  • Costley, Clare L. “David, Bathsheba, and the Penitential Psalms”, Renaissance Quarterly, 57 (2004): 1235–1277.

    Google Scholar 

  • d’Albon, Marquis [André]. Le Livre des Juges: les cinq textes de la version française faite au XIIe siècle pour les chevaliers du Temple. Lyon: Imprimerie d’Alexandre Rey, 1913.

    Google Scholar 

  • Deeming, Helen. “An English Monastic Miscellany: The Reading Manuscript of Sumer Is Icumen In”, in Manuscripts and Medieval Song: Inscription, Performance, Context, ed. Helen Deeming and Elizabeth Eva Leach, 116–140. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  • Drewer, Lois. “Jephthah and His Daughter in Medieval Art: Ambiguities of Heroism and Sacrifice”, in Insights and Interpretations: Studies in Celebration of the Eighty-Fifth Anniversary of the Index of Christian Art, ed. Colum Hourihane, 35–59. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dronke, Peter. Poetic Individuality in the Middle Ages. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dronke, Peter, and Margaret Alexiou, “The Lament of Jephtha’s Daughter”, Reprinted in Peter Dronke, Intellectuals and Poets in Medieval Europe, 345–388. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  • Einbinder, Susan. Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.

    Google Scholar 

  • Flynn, William. “Abelard and Rhetoric: Widows and Virgins at the Paraclete”, in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Babette Hellerman, 155–186. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, ed. Walter v. Wartburg et al., 25 vols. to date. Bonn: Schröeder and Other Places and Publishers, 1922–.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fritz, Jean-Marie. “Conjointures troyennes: Pierre le Mangeur, Chrétien de Troyes et l’auteur du poème de la Genèse”, in Les Écoles de pensée du XIIe siècle et la littérature romane (oc et oïl), ed. Valérie Fasseur and Jean-René Valette, 195–209. Turnhout: Brepols, 2016.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fudeman, Kirsten A. “These Things I Will Remember: The Troyes Martyrdom and Collective Memory”, Prooftexts, 29.1 (2009): 1–30.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gibbs, Marion B., and Sidney M. Johnson, ed. Medieval German Literature: A Companion. New York and London: Routledge, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  • Gillingham, Bryan. Secular Medieval Latin Song: An Anthology. Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. The Social Background to Secular Medieval Latin Song. Ottawa: Institute for Mediaeval Music, 1998.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. Music in the Cluniac Ecclesia: A Pilot Project. Ottawa: Institute of Medieval Music, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • Glendenning, Robert. “Pyramus and Thisbe in the Medieval Classroom”, Speculum, 61 (1986): 51–78.

    Google Scholar 

  • Godman, Peter. The Archpoet and Medieval Culture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Greenstein, Edward L. “The Riddle of Samson”, Prooftexts, 1.3 (1981): 237–260.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hahn, Thomas. “The Medieval Oedipus”, Comparative Literature, 32.3 (1980): 225–237.

    Google Scholar 

  • Handschin, Jacques. “The Summer Canon and Its Background, I”, Musica Disciplina, 3.2/4 (1949): 55–59.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hanning, Robert W. “Engin in Twelfth-Century Romance: An Examination of the Roman d’Enéas and Hue de Rotelande’s Ipomedon”, Yale French Studies, 51 (1974): 82–101.

    Google Scholar 

  • Heinzer, Felix. “Samson dux fortissimus – Löwenbändiger und Weiberknecht vom Dienst? Funktionen und Wandlungen eines literarischen Motivs im Mittelalter”, Mittellateinisches Jahrbuch, 48 (2008): 25–46.

    Google Scholar 

  • Herman de Valenciennes. «Li romanz de Dieu et de sa mère» d’Herman de Valenciennes, chanoine et prêtre (XIIe siècle), ed. Ina Spiele. Leiden: Presses universitaires de Leide, 1975.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hoogvliet, Margaret. “The Medieval Vernacular Bible in French as a Flexible Text: Selective and Discontinuous Reading Practices”, Form and Function in the Late Medieval Bible, ed. Eyal Poleg and Laura Light, 283–306. Leiden: Brill, 2013.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hunt, R. W. Review of Raby, ed., Oxford Book of Medieval Verse: Medium Aevum, 28 (1959): 189–194.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ingham, Patricia Clare. The Medieval New: Ambivalence in an Age of Innovation. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

  • Jeanroy, Alfred, Louis Brandin, and Pierre Aubry. Lais et descorts français du XIIIe siècle: texte et musique. Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1975.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kay, Sarah. Courtly Contradictions: The Emergence of the Literary Object in the Twelfth Century. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kearney, Eileen F. “Peter Abelard’s Planctus ‘Dolorum Solatium’: A New Song for David”, in Rethinking Abelard: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Babette Hellemans, 253–281. Leiden: Brill, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Keene, Derek. “Text, Visualization and Politics: London, 1150–1250”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 18, 6th Series, 69–99. London: Royal Historical Society, 2008.

    Google Scholar 

  • La Bible anonyme du Ms. Paris B.N.f. fr.763, ed. Julia C. Szirmai. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1985.

    Google Scholar 

  • La Bible d’Acre: Genèse et Exode: édition critique, ed. Pierre Nobel. Besançon: Presses universitaires de Franche-Comté, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • La Bible de Jehan Malkaraume (Ms. Paris, Bibl. Nat. F. Fr. 903) (XIIIe/XIVe siècle): ed. J. R. Smeets, 2 vols. Assen and Amsterdam: Van Gorcum, 1978.

    Google Scholar 

  • La Bible de Macé de La Charité, ed. J. R. Smeets, 7 vols. Leiden: Universitaire Pers, 1964–1986.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lawton, David. “Englishing the Bible, 1066–1549”, in The Cambridge History of Medieval English Literature, ed. David Wallace, 454–482. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  • Léglu, Catherine. “Giving Voice to Samson and Delilah: Troubadour and Monastic Songs of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries”, in Performing Medieval Text, ed. Ardis Butterfield, Pauline Souleau, and Henry Hope, 39–52. Oxford: MHRA and Legenda, 2017.

    Google Scholar 

  • Les Paroles Salomun, ed. Tony Hunt. Manchester: ANTS, 2012.

    Google Scholar 

  • Metzler, Irina. Disability in Medieval Europe: Thinking About Physical Impairment During the High Middle Ages, c. 1100–1400. London: Routledge, 2006.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. A Social History of Disability in the Middle Ages: Cultural Considerations of Physical Impairment. London: Routledge, 2013.

    Google Scholar 

  • Munk Olsen, Birger. “La réception de Stace au moyen âge”, in Nova de veteribus. Mittel- und Neulateinische Studien für Paul Gerhardt Schmidt, ed. Andreas Bihrer, 230–246. Munich and Leipzig: K. G. Saur Verlag, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  • Münster-Swendsen, Mia. “December Liberties: Playing with the Roman Poets in the High-Medieval Schools”, Interfaces, 3 (2016): 90–108.

    Google Scholar 

  • Newman, Barbara. Medieval Crossover: Reading the Secular Against the Sacred (Conway Lectures in Medieval Studies.). Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2013.

    Google Scholar 

  • Orlandi, Giovanni. “On the Text and Interpretation of Abelard’s Planctus”, in Poetry and Philosophy in the Middle Ages: A Festschrift for Peter Dronke, ed. John Marenbon, 327–342. Leiden: Brill, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pfeffer, Wendy. “Yet Another Look at the Troyes Elegy”, in ‘Chançon legiere a chanter’: Essays on Old French Literature in Honor of Samuel N. Rosenberg, ed. Karen Fresco and Wendy Pfeffer, 67–84. Birmingham, AL: Summa, 2007.

    Google Scholar 

  • Piramus et Tisbé, ed. and trans. Penny Eley (Liverpool Online Series, Critical Editions of French Texts; 5). Liverpool: University of Liverpool, 2001.

    Google Scholar 

  • Poème anglo-normand sur l’Ancien Testament, ed. Pierre Nobel, 2 vols. Paris: Champion, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  • Raby F. J. E., ed. Oxford Book of Medieval Latin Verse. Oxford: Clarendon, 1959.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rachetta, Maria Teresa. “La Bible d’Herman de Valenciennes et le problème du genre littéraire”, Critica del testo, 17 (2014): 53–103.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rushworth, Jessica. “Dante’s Purgatory and Liturgical Performance”, in Performing Medieval Text, ed. Ardis Butterfield, Pauline Souleau, and Henry Hope. Oxford: MHRA and Legenda, 2017.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ruys, Juanita Feros. “Planctus magis quam cantici: The generic significance of Abelard’s Planctus”, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 11 (2002): 37–44.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ruys, Juanita Feros, and John O. Ward. The Repentant Abelard: Family, Gender, and Ethics in Peter Abelard’s Carmen ad Astrolabium and Planctus. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Seneca, Agamemnon, ed. R. J. Tarrant. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sequentia, Visions from the Book, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sheppard, Jennifer M. The Buildwas Books: Book Production, Acquisition and Use at an English Cistercian Monastery, 1165–c. 1400. Oxford: Oxford Bibliographical Society, 1997.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smeets, J. R. “Les cornes de Moïse”, Romania, 114 (1996): 235–246.

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith, Kathryn A. “History, Typology and Homily: The Joseph Cycle in the Queen Mary Psalter”, Gesta, 32 (1993): 147–159.

    Google Scholar 

  • Spanke, Hans. “Die Stuttgarter handschrift H.B. I Ascet. 95”, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur, 68 (1931): 79–88.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stevens, John. “Samson dux fortissime, an International Latin Song”, Plainsong and Medieval Music, 1 (1992): 1–40.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “Sumer Is Icumen In: A Neglected Context”, Expedition nach dem Wahrheit: Poems, Essays, and Papers in Honour of Theo Stemmler, ed. Stefan Horlacher, Theo Stemmler, and Marion Islinger, 307–347. Heidelberg: Winter, 1996.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. The Later Cambridge Songs: An English Song Collection of the Twelfth Century. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Szirmai, Julia. “Un manuscrit redécouvert de la Bible anonyme du XIIIe siècle”, Revue de Linguistique romane, 53 (1989): 435–42.

    Google Scholar 

  • Taylor, Andrew. Textual Situations: Three Medieval Manuscripts and Their Readers. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2002.

    Google Scholar 

  • The Latin Josephus project, Flavius Josephus (Latin trans.), Antiquities, ed. Richard M. Pollard and Josh Timmermann, with the assistance of William Ben Glaeser, “The Latin Josephus Project”, 2013–. https://sites.google.com/site/latinjosephus/.

  • Un fragment de la Genèse en vers: fin XIIIe - début XIVe siècle, ed. Julia Szirmai. Geneva: Droz, 2005.

    Google Scholar 

  • Van Liere, Frans. The Medieval Bible: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

    Google Scholar 

  • Venuti, Lawrence. “Genealogies of Translation Theory: Jerome”, Boundary 2, 37.3 (2010): 5–28.

    Google Scholar 

  • Wulstan, David. “Secular Lyrics from Paris and the Paraclete”, in The Poetic and Musical Legacy of Heloise and Abelard, ed. Marc Stewart and David Wulstan, 34–48. Ottawa: Institute of Mediaeval Music, 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. “Liturgical Drama and the ‘School of Abelard’”, Comparative Drama, 42.3 (2008): 347–357.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2018 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this chapter

Léglu, C. (2018). Verse and Music. In: Samson and Delilah in Medieval Insular French. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90638-6_3

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics