Assembling the Lyric Self
Authorship from Troubadour Song to Italian Poetry Book
Examines a crucial moment in the development of Western literature.
Assembling the Lyric Self investigates the transition in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries from the first surviving Provençal and Italian manuscripts (mostly multiauthor lyric anthologies prepared by scribes) to the single-author codex-that is, to the form we now think of as the book of poems. Working from extensive archival and philological research, Olivia Holmes explores the efforts of individual poets to establish poetic authenticity and authority in the context of expanding vernacular literacy.
There are many things to commend in this book. Olivia Holmes does not engage in the trite word play so often associated with this topic, and the bibliography is rich in both primary and secondary sources. Holmes is expert in the various poetic forms of lyric poetry of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and clearly has command of a variety of languages. Additionally, the extent of her research experience is evidenced by her references to variations in manuscripts and sources.
Comitatus
Examines a crucial moment in the development of Western literature.
Assembling the Lyric Self investigates the transition in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries from the first surviving Provençal and Italian manuscripts (mostly multiauthor lyric anthologies prepared by scribes) to the single-author codex-that is, to the form we now think of as the book of poems. Working from extensive archival and philological research, Olivia Holmes explores the efforts of individual poets to establish poetic authenticity and authority in the context of expanding vernacular literacy. As she moves from an overview to a consideration of particular authors (including Guittone d’Arezzo and Nicolo de’Rossi) and manuscripts, she both demonstrates the narrative and structural subtlety of many of the works and reveals unsuspected phases in a gradual historical shift.
Assembling the Lyric Self challenges received ideas about the origins of a genre (the author-ordered poetry book) and about periodization, including the traditional opposition between medieval conformity and Renaissance individualism. A major reassessment and redefinition of an entire tradition, this book will be essential reading for scholars not only of the Middle Ages but also of the early modern period whose precedents this book realigns.
ISBN 0-8166-3343-6 Cloth/jacket £24.50 $34.95x
240 Pages 8 black-and-white photos 5 7/8 x 9 January
Medieval Cultures Series, volume 21
Translation inquiries: University of Minnesota Press
There are many things to commend in this book. Olivia Holmes does not engage in the trite word play so often associated with this topic, and the bibliography is rich in both primary and secondary sources. Holmes is expert in the various poetic forms of lyric poetry of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and clearly has command of a variety of languages. Additionally, the extent of her research experience is evidenced by her references to variations in manuscripts and sources.
Comitatus
Holmes overall offers convincing arguments not only because of her meticulous literary analysis, but also because of her insistence to study the manuscript tradition first and foremost, and to draw relevant conclusions from her analysis . . . .
Mediaevistik
Olivia Holmes makes a major contribution to medieval literary history, as well as offering an object-lesson in how to approach the lyric poetry of the period in a way that both observes historical decorum and makes the texts come alive to contemporary readers.
Steven Botterill, University of California, Berkeley
There is much to be admired in Holmes' scholarship, particularly her philological diligence and her scrupulous loyalty to the manuscripts.
The Medieval Review
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