Qui Vauroit Bon Vers Oïr : Voice, Text, and Social Insight in \u3ci\u3eAucassin et Nicolette\u3c/i\u3e

Aucassin et Nicolette has stimulated much dialogue among scholars. Literary genres clearly express perceptions that are representative of an historical period and culture, and Aucassin et Nicolette\u27s tendency to synthesize literary genres, namely poetry and prose, raises many points relative to the social sphere in which it came into existence. To best illuminate these characteristics in Aucassin et Nicolette, an eclectic approach to the text is in order. The first chapter explores the manner in which the story is told, focusing on the voice as it is the artist\u27s tool to transmit emphatic information. The poet is performer, narrator, both Aucassin and Nicolette, peasant and noble. The second chapter explores the ideas examined in the first chapter through a textual interpretation of Aucassin et Nicolette. This text is a hybrid of already thriving literary endeavors. Familiarity is interrupted by variation and deviation in character development and plot line. These interruptions are intentional, not forcibly in a political sense, but as a social event that the author wishes to address through humor. Humor wards off bad feelings. Anti-clerical and appear frequently in the story, the performance. anti-chivalric sentiment yet are sublimated into the performance. The final chapter explores the significance of these sentiments and treats them as artifacts of a larger social context. Whether the author intended or not, Aucassin et Nicolette divulges the attitudes of a period and particular culture, a culture whose narrative influences leave much still to be explored