Mary Frances Brown
 |
Department of French and Italian
|
Statement of Interests
I work on texts of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in French, Latin, Occitan, and Catalan. My approach takes account of the Middle Ages' alterity (the shifting relation between Latin and the vernaculars, a manuscript culture in which texts have a distinct mode of existence) and finds its theoretical basis in medieval discussions of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy, as well as in more recent discussions of epistemology and aesthetics. I am currently completing revisions to my first book, "Discourses of Encyclopedism in the Scholastic Age: A Fissured Mirror," in which I show how the predominant role of rhetoric in the medieval episteme permits a fertile exchange between encyclopedic and poetic or courtly writing in the thirteenth century. At the same time, I am beginning a second book project, provisionally titled "Aesthetics, Ideology, and the Invention of Romance," which describes the interdependence of courtly aesthetics and ideologies during the first decades of romance writing in the Angevin and Capetian court milieux. My other interests include courtly lyric (the troubadours and trouvères), philosophical poetry, and medieval and early modern humanisms.
Publications
Discourses of Encyclopedism in the Scholastic Age: A Fissured Mirror, 323 pp. text + 20 pp. illustrations, under review.
Memory and Medieval France, c.500-c.1400, ed. Elma Brenner, Meredith Cohen, and Mary Frances Brown, under review.
“The Speculum maius, Between Thesaurus and Lieu de mémoire,” in Memory and Medieval France, c. 500-c.1400, ed. Elma Brenner, Meredith Cohen, and Mary Frances Brown, q.v., 10 pp.
“The Obscure Figures of the Encyclopedia: From the Book of Pleasing Vision To the Tree of Knowledge,” under review, 57 pp. text + 11 pp. illustrations.
“Encyclopedism,” “Prosimetrum,” and “Vincent of Beauvais,” Oxford Dictionary of the Middle Ages, gen. ed. Robert E. Bjork (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming 2010).
“Critique and Complicity: Metapoetical Reflections on the Gendered Figures of Body and Text in the Roman de la Rose,” Exemplaria: A Journal of Theory in Medieval and Renaissance Studies 21.2 (2009): 129-60.
Review of The Place of Thought: The Complexity of the One in Late Medieval French Didactic Poetry, by Sarah Kay. L’Esprit Créateur 48.3 (Fall 2008): 129.
“Contained Dissonance: The Speculum maius and Medieval Literary Practice.” Vincent of Beauvais Newsletter 31 (2006): 3-8.
Courses Taught
French 8290/Medieval Studies 8110/English 8110, “The Roman de la Rose,” Graduate seminar on the theory and practice of literature during the scholastic period, through the lens of the Roman de la Rose.
French 8190, “Old French Workshop," Linguistic workshop accompanying graduate courses in medieval literature.
French 8114/Medieval Studies 8110, “The Troubadours," Graduate seminar on troubadour lyric, with theoretical and philological components.
French 8110/Medieval Studies 8110, “Experiments in Romance," Graduate seminar on the earliest manifestations of romance in Old French.
French 3650, “The Medieval Image," Upper division undergraduate course on the theory and use of the image in medieval literature and art, as well as modern reinterpretations of the medieval image.
French 3350, “Courtly Performances: Literature and Music in the Entourage of Eleanor of Aquitaine," Upper division undergraduate course.
French 3140, “Reading Renaissance," Upper division undergraduate course on the humanist literature of the French Renaissance.