Ebook: Manuscript meanings and genres in Adenet le Roi’s ‘Berte as grans pies’: Compilation and reception

A manuscript gives insight into medieval reading experiences, even in the absence of notes or sketches left by readers themselves. In a manuscript containing more than one text, the physical features of the material book, such as page layout, titles and section headings, and illustrations orient readers’ understanding of the relationship between texts in the compilation. Such associations encourage readers to pay particular attention to textual characteristics, such as style of composition, themes, and motifs, which are shared by the texts and which help readers determine their genre, providing a conceptual frame that guides interpretation.

Adenet le Roi's late thirteenth-century Berte as grans pies presents a rich subject for the study of how manuscript context affects readers’ perception of genre because it appears in a variety of compilations and because its textual features are not sufficient to establish a well-defined genre. Its composition in laisses suggests that it is a chanson de geste, while themes and motifs point to romance or exemplary tales. However, manuscript context allows readers to stabilize their perception of Berte's genre. Of the nine manuscripts, seven are compilations: three encourage understanding the text as an epic, two as a romance, and two as an exemplary story.

Having reconstructed medieval readers' understanding of Berte in its manuscript contexts, we consider the implications of adopting a particular genre frame. This frame predisposes readers toward an interpretation of the text’s matter; function, as entertaining or instructive; tone, as serious or lighthearted; and modes of performance, ranging from a vibrantly enacted presentation to a silent and introspective reading.

Each chapter concerns an aspect of Berte as grans pies' genre and the meaning a particular manuscript generated for a medieval reader: Adenet's creation of a polygeneric text (Chapter 1), readers' experience of that text as epic, romance, or exemplary in various manuscript contexts (Chapters 2-4), and reworkings of the story's genre by later composers (Chapter 5). Although this study focuses on Berte, its methodology for reconstructing interpretation of genre through manuscript context might be used for any medieval work appearing in compilation.