Shades of the storyteller in medieval historiography: A text-contrastive and diachronic application of the Labovian oral narrative frame and of indices of orality to medieval historical prose

547 Pages·1997·21.429 MB·English

by  Charles Langdon Pooser

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SHADES OF THE STORYTELLER IN MEDIEVAL HISTORIOGRAPHY:
A TEXT-CONTRASTIVE AND DIACHRONIC APPLICATION OF THE LABOVIAN ORAL
NARRATIVE FRAME AND OF INDICES OF ORALITY TO MEDIEVAL HISTORICAL PROSE
Charles Langdon Pooser
Submitted to the faculty of the Graduate School
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Department of French and Italian
Indiana University
March, 1997
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UMI Number: 9727964
Copyright 1997 by
Pooser, Charles Langdon
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Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University,
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy.
Samuel N. Rosenberg, Chair
Doctoral Dr. Kathleen Bardovi-Harlig
Committee
Dr. Consuelo Lopez-Morillas
Dr. Albert Valdman
Date of Oral Examination: AAJulzX /n / /*?$ 7
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iii
C 1997
Charles Langdon Pooser
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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iv
It is with much love and deep gratitude that I dedicate this
dissertation to my mother, Catherine Wilson Pooser.
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V
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would first like to express my sincere appreciation to the chair
of my committee, Professor Samuel N. Rosenberg. I could not have asked
for a better mentor, and his insightful observations and generous words of
encouragement often served to elevate my level of excitement about the
task before me and to calm my feelings of uncertainty. I would also like
to heartily thank the other members of my committee, Professors Kathleen
Bardovi-Harlig, Consuelo Lopez-Morillas, and Albert Valdman for the time
and care spent in reviewing and evaluating my work.
I have been mightily blessed through this entire process with the
support of so many wonderful friends. I am particularly grateful to the
following people, all of whom have kept me moving forward with many a kind
word and deed: Eric Athenot, Natalia Costa-Roberts, Anthony Everman,
Chantal Gemiers, Merrill Hatlen, Gene Hicks, Sheila Hoffman-Hicks, Laurie
Hurt, Tom Klingler, Pat Kyle-Mosele, Rosemary Lovely, Teleia Lower, Molly
Lynde, Kathleen Michum-Gumbel, Patty Monson-Geertz, John Moses, Barbara
and Roger Pieroni, Deborah Piston-Hatlen, Laurie Ramsey, Mike Recchia,
Karolyn Redoutey, Peter Scholes, Ted Seaman, Vera Stegmann, Brian Swager,
Terese Thonus, Louisa Tompkins, Molly Wieland, Darlene Williams-White,
Laurel and Gary Willingham-McLain.
A very special expression of gratitude goes to Brian, who has been
obliged to weather the last, and definitely toughest, period of
dissertating along with me. He has provided me with a well of confidence
and enthusiasm from which I have drawn repeatedly in the last two years.
My family in South Carolina has been most supportive of me in all my
endeavors. I hope they will enjoy with me a strong measure of
satisfaction at the completion of this dissertation.
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Charles Langdon Pooser
Shades of the Storyteller in Medieval Historiography:
A Text-Contrastive and Diachronic Application of the Labovian Oral
Narrative Frame and of Indices of Oralitv to Medieval Historical Prose
The influence of orality in the shaping of medieval Romance texts
has been a topic of extensive research. However, few researchers have
explored the rich potential for parallels from recent sociolinguistic
and ethnographic literature on oral narrative in modem vernaculars.
Moreover, most research in medieval Romance has focused on early genres,
such as the epic. This research compares lengthy textual excerpts from
12 works of the 13th and 15th centuries drawn from a single genre, the
French historical prose narrative. The primary goal is to contribute to
a better understanding of the continuing development of a distinctly
literate communicative tool in late medieval France and of its debt to
earlier literary modes more firmly rooted in oral, performative
contexts. An analytical narrative framework developed by the
sociolinguist, William Labov, is used as the principal analytical tool.
A number of indices of orality (and/or involvement-focus) are also
applied to the texts of this study in an effort to discover any
diachronic patterning that may be related to the issue of textual
orality.
Chapter 1 of this study is devoted to an extensive review of the
literature concerning textual orality from first a general perspective
and then from one more squarely focused upon medieval French textual
materials. Chapter 2 provides a detailed presentation of the Labovian
narrative framework used in the analysis of the prose excerpts. I use
previous applications of this framework and recent research on the
description of narrative, as guides to the extensions and modifications
I bring to the original design.
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vii
Chapters 3, 4 and 5 include comparative examinations of the data
generated by the various aspects of the analysis. Chapter 3 examines
the various non-evaluative components of the Labovian framework while
Chapter 4 is concerned with the relative use of external and internal
evaluation. Chapter 5 presents a detailed looked at the results of the
application of the indices of orality.
I hope to show convincingly in the final chapter that there is
strong motivation for postulating a diachronic image of later medieval
prose as a medium continuing to evolve toward a less performatively-
oriented form of communicative discourse.
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