The "Ambiguous Genre" in Medieval Literature

FAIN: FT-13785-78

Suzanne Fleischman
University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA 94704-5940)

To study the problems raised by Medieval texts that resist uniform interpretation by critics. The grantee will bring together several controversial works that break from tradition on the level of form as well as content, including the Libro de Buon Amor, Aucassin et Nicolette, and Old Provencal "romances.” These texts seem to be deliberately ambiguous, and might reflect a crisis of literary and/or social values on the part of the society or class which produced it.