Content area
Full Text
Levente Seláf, Chanter plus haut: La Chanson religieuse vernaculaire au Moyen Âge (essai de contextualisation), Nouvelles bibliothèques du Moyen Âge (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2008). 656 pp. ISBN 978-2-7453-1697-4. euro115.00.
Levente Seláfs study of vernacular religious lyric poetry has as part of its subtide 'essai de contextualisation', but a better description would be 'essai de catégorisation', as this appears to be the main concern of the author. He appears determined to define what constitutes 'religious lyric' and to establish the 'complete' corpus of such lyrics in French, Occitan, and Spanish. To that end, the volume offers an exhaustive examination of religious verse in its chosen vernaculars. In nearly every chapter, the reader perceives the will to thoroughness and the desire to catalogue, classify, and define. While one can appreciate the desire to be complete, and to define a corpus amidst what is admittedly a protei'form subject, this is, unfortunately, not a generally positive...