- Original hardcover printing
- Texts introduced, edited, and translated (into modern French) by Eglal Doss-Quinby, Marie-Geneviève Grossel, and Samuel N. Rosenberg
- (Series: Essais sur le Moyen Âge, 46)
- Paris: Champion, 2010
- 240 pages
- Hardcover: ISBN 978-2-7453-1996-8
- Paperback reprint of the 2010 edition
- “Sottes chansons contre Amours”: parodie et burlesque au Moyen Âge.
- Texts introduced, edited, and translated (into modern French) by Eglal Doss-Quinby, Marie-Geneviève Grossel, and Samuel N. Rosenberg
- (Series: Essais sur le Moyen Âge, 46)
- Paris: Champion, 2014
- 240 pages
- Paperback: ISBN 978-2-7453-2796-3
- The contents of this reprint are the same as those of the 2010 hardcover edition.
Two 13th-century or very early 14th-century French manuscripts preserve a corpus of 29 song texts that they identify as sottes chansons contre Amours, only two of which are attributed to a named writer. All stem from the region of Lorraine. They are all rhymed pieces, 5 stanzas long, some of them ending in a short envoi. They are “silly” compositions “against Love,” obviously meant for humorous entertainment, misogynistic, bawdy, often absurd and, whatever else they may be, they are parodic counterweights to the refinement of trouvères’ songs of courtly love.
The interest of these compositions, which may strike us today as juvenile and in poor taste, lies in what they reveal of a 13th-century sociological and cultural reality (in which some of them were winners of a poetry competition), and in the challenge they present linguistically.
For a detailed discussion of the genre, followed by the entire corpus in the original Old French and in modern French translation, see the book itself.
The eleven unpublished English translations presented here are meant to offer a reasonable sense of the corpus. They are the only ones I have made.
“On n’exagère guère en disant que toute étude de la parodie au Moyen Âge devra désormais tenir compte des résultats de ce travail collectif. . . . Edition critique et monographie à la fois, cet ouvrage marque en fait une nouvelle étape dans le processus de redécouverte et de revalorisation de l’originalité de la lyrique médiévale du Nord de la France.”
Friedrich Wolfzettel (Goethe Institut—Frankfurt-am-Main), Cahiers de recherches médiévales et humanistes (2010), http://journals.openedition.org/crm/12677
See an early 14th-century Old French manucript
The sottes chansons come from more than one medieval manuscript. See one of the sources—MS. Douce 308, Bodleian Library, Oxford: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/inquire/p/637930c2-4d46-4616-8980-6c16717d5268.
An abécédaire listing the 22 “sottes chansons contre amours” in this manuscript appears on folio 143 verso (page 322 of the electronic document).
The sottes chansons appear on folios 239 recto through 243 verso (pp. 525-536 of the electronic document).