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Exploring the Limits of Self-Portraiture in Le Jeu de la feuillée

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

Hanna Scolnicov
Hanna Scolnicov
Affiliation:
Hanna Scolnicov is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Theatre Studies, Tel Aviv University.
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Extract

One could say that all plays, even those with an international reputation, are best understood within their national, ethnic and cultural contexts. But very few plays can be as intimately attached to their author, his city, his family, his friends and enemies, and fellow citizens in general, as the Jeu de la feuillée, written by the trouvére Adam de la Halle, and staged by him in 1276, in the Petite Place of the town of Arras. For the protagonist of the play is Adam himself, and some of the other characters are real people connected with him. This is a play of unrivalled audacity, in which Adam exposes himself for public scrutiny. He deals openly with his own ambitions and frustrations, with his intimate relations with his wife and his troubled relationship with his father, and with the lives of his friends and neighbours. All this is unfolded in front of an audience holding his acquaintances, some of whom are equally satirized in the play.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Research International , Volume 24 , Issue 2 , Summer 1999 , pp. 125 - 130
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 1999

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References

Notes

1. The text has been printed by de Coussemaker, E. H., Œuvres complètes du trouvère Adam de la Halle (Paris: 1872Google Scholar; Genève-Paris: Slatkine Reprints, 1982), and by Langlois, E., Adam le Bossu, trouvère artésien du XIIIe siècle: Le Jeu de la feuillée (Paris: Classiques français du Moyen Age, 1911)Google Scholar. English translation by Axton, Richard and Stevens, John, Medieval French Plays (Oxford: Basil Black-well, 1971)Google Scholar. All quotations from the play are from this edition.

2. See, for example, Guy, Henry, Essai sur la vie et les Œuvres littéraires du trouvère Adan de le Hale (Genève: Slatkine, 1970Google Scholar; reprint of 1898 edition), p. 337.

3. See, for example, Fritz, Jean-Marie, Le Discours du fou au Moyen Age (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1992), p. 379.Google Scholar

4. ‘Une série de tableaux dont la cohérence est discutable’, according to Adler, Alfred, Sens et composition du feu de la feuillée (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1956), p. 1Google Scholar. I have taken the idea of the revue from Richard Axton's brilliant introduction to the play, in Medieval French Plays, p. 211.

5. For a discussion of the special status of the clerc, see, for example, the Introduction by Badel, Pierre-Yves to de la Halle, Adam, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Librairie Générale Française, 1995)Google Scholar, text with modern French translation, p. 7; Buridant, Claude et Trotin, Jean, Le Jeu de la feuillée (Paris: Librairie Honoré Champion, 1983)Google Scholar, modem French translation with notes, p. 60.

6. Axton, Richard, European Drama of the Early Middle Ages (London: Hutchinson University Press, 1974), p. 145.Google Scholar

7. See, in a different context, Walter, Philippe, Mythologie chrétienne: Rites et mythes du moyen âge (Paris: Editions Entente, 1992), p. 49Google Scholar: ‘l'homme semblable à la femme enceinte’.

8. See Fritz, , Le Discours du fou, especially pp. 46–56.Google Scholar

9. The fairies' feast is well recorded in the penitential decree of Burchard, Bishop of Worms, ‘Corrector sive medicus’, Patrologia latina 89, pp. 1036–50Google Scholar, written between 1008 and 1012. This illuminating document is widely quoted and analysed. See, for example, Grisward, Joel-Henri, ‘Les fées, l'Aurore et la Fortune (Mythologie indo-européenne et le Jeu de la feuillée)’, in Etudes de langue et de littérature françaises offertes à André Lanly (Publications de l'Université de Nancy II, 1980), p. 126Google Scholar; Walter, , Mythologie chrétienne, pp. 24–5.Google Scholar

10. Richard Axton hypothesizes a popular midsummer-play genre in between the ‘folk and religious watch’ and Adam's accomplished play. See European Drama, p. 151.

11. See, for example, Langlois, , Adam le Bossu, pp. ix–xGoogle Scholar; Grisward, , ‘Les fées, l'Aurore et la Fortune’, pp. 125, 134.Google Scholar

12. See Badel, , de la Halle, Adam, Œuvres complètes, p. 21.Google Scholar

13. See Walter, , Mythologie chrétienne, pp. 11–12, 179Google Scholar. ‘8th century’ in regard to St Augustine is obviously a misprint.

14. See Guy, , Essai sur la vie … du trouvére Adan de le Hale, p. 337.Google Scholar

15. For a discussion of the use of mirrors, see, for example, Koortbojian, Michael, Self-Portraits (London: Scala Publications, 1992).Google Scholar

16. On mirrors in art, see Miller, Jonathan, On Reflection (London: National Gallery Publications, 1998).Google Scholar

17. ‘L'autobiographie est un moment de la vie qu'elle raconte; elle s'efforce de dégager le sens de cette vie, seulement elle est elle-même un sens dans cette vie.’ Gusdorf, Georges, ‘Conditions et limites de l'autobiographie’, Formen der Selbstdarstellung: Analekten zu einer Geschichte des literarischen Selbstportraits (Festschrift Fritz Neubert), p. 118Google Scholar; quoted in Olney, James, Metaphors of Self: The Meaning, of Autobiography (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 273.Google Scholar

18. Berger, Roger, Littérature et société arrageoises au XIIIe siècle: Les chansons et dits artésiens (Arras: Mémoires de la Commission Départementale des Monuments Historiques du Pas-de-Calais, 1991)Google Scholar

19. At least one scholar thought that the whole point of the play must have been the witty contrast between the real-life actors and their fictionalized dramatic characters. See Sutherland, D. R., ‘Fact and Fiction in the Jeu de la feuillée’, Romance Philology 13 (1959–1960), pp. 426–8.Google Scholar

20. MS 657, Bibliothèque municipale d'Arras.

21. Joseph Dane thinks that this may be due to the limited number of manuscript copies available. See: Res/Verba: A Study in Medieval French Drama (Leiden: Brill, 1985), p. 6.

22. See Woody Allen on Woody Allen, in conversation with Stig Bjorkman (Faber: London, 1994), p. 139. See also Bendazzi, G., The Films of Woody Allen (London: Ravette, 1987), p. 5.Google Scholar

23. Ursula Martinez, a cabaret artist and comedian, has recently produced an autobiographical show, part scripted, part spontaneous, entitled A Family Outing, in which she appears with her parents. Interestingly, even in 1998, Martinez still felt that the whole point of her show was that she was ‘pushing at the bounds of theatre’. See Lacey, Hester, ‘The family, stripped bare’, The Independent, ‘Real Life’, p. 4Google Scholar. I am indebted to Daniel Kleinman for this reference.

24. See Adler, , Sens et composition du Jeu de la feuillée, p. 3.Google Scholar

25. See, for example, Axton, , European Drama, pp. 148–51.Google Scholar