
Claire VIAL: Clothing the debate: textiles, text-isles and the economy of gift-giving in four Middle English Breton lays Textiles, both as clothes and elements of the codified knightly costume, play a major structuring role in the Breton lays. Whether embodied in recurring poetic motives or staged in descriptive pauses, these text-isles, or recognisable textual islands, contribute to the spiralling aesthetic of the Breton lays with issues of their own, involving narrative and character development, processes of social signposting and potential theatricality. Pieces d'etoffes, vetements, elements du costume chevaleresque... sont dotes d'une fonction structurante majeure dans les lais bretons en moyen-anglais. Sous la forme de motifs poetiques iteratifs ou de pauses descriptives singulieres, ces ilots textuels recurrents participent de l'esthetique en spirale caracteristique des lais anglais, qu'ils enrichissent de problematiques qui leur sont propres, liees au developpement des personnages et de l'intrigue, a l'affichage du statut social et aux effets de theatralite. Denis LAGAE-DEVOLDERE: "Nothing of what is writ" (4.2.199): silenced texts in Measure for Measure Focussing on an aspect often neglected by critics, this paper suggests a word-by-word exploration into the trajectory of the various written texts, letters or "writs" in Measure for Measure. With the New Historicism notion of negotiable, volatile authority/auctoriality, this is an attempt at probing into the political and dramatic consequences of the letter-writing activity and its implications on the ever slippery notion of truth. Such "writs" are turned into instruments of manipulation, and deceit, which defy reason, and call for what one could call blind faith, from both the characters on stage and the off-stage audience. En s'interessant a un aspect souvent neglige par la critique, cet article propose une analyse detaillee de la trajectoire des messages e
Page Count:
128
Publication Date:
2014-05-26
ISBN-10:
2252039264
ISBN-13:
9782252039267
No comments yet. Be the first to share your thoughts!