Courtly Lyric in the Medieval French Tradition

FAIN: FS-256837-17

Illinois Wesleyan University (Bloomington, IL 61701-1773)
Christopher John Callahan (Project Director: February 2017 to April 2021)

A three-week seminar for sixteen college and university faculty on medieval French courtly lyric poetry, read dually as text and as music.

Christopher Callahan and William Hudson, faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University in French and Music, respectively, propose an interdisciplinary Summer Seminar on the trouvères, medieval France’s lyric poets (1180 – 1300). The seminar will foster collaboration between language/literature scholars and music faculty expanding their curriculum into the Middle Ages. Trouvère poetry requires a dual approach—as text and as music; the seminar is designed to bring each constituency to relative fluency in the other’s discipline. Studying themes introduced in trouvère poetry still relevant today such as love versus family obligation, gender and empowerment, and medievalism will improve integration with participants’ curricula. The participants will work from images of 13th-century manuscripts and learn to transcribe, analyze and interpret them, through recitation and song. Genres and styles of both poetry and music in this period and polyphonic motet settings will be studied.