JACQUES MILET’S DESTRUCTION DE TROIE LA GRANT: REASSESSING FRENCH THEATRE IN THE LATE MEDIEVAL PERIOD by Lofton L. Durham III BA, Transylvania University, 1995 MA, University of Pittsburgh, 2005 Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of The School of Arts and Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy University of Pittsburgh 2009 UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ARTS AND SCIENCES This dissertation was presented by Lofton L. Durham III It was defended on April 22, 2009 and approved by Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, PhD, Professor, French & Italian Kathleen George, PhD, Professor, Theatre Arts Bruce McConachie, PhD, Professor, Theatre Arts Dissertation Advisor: Attilio Favorini, PhD, Professor, Theatre Arts ii Copyright © by Lofton L. Durham III 2009 iii Jacques Milet's Destruction de Troie la Grant: Reassessing French Theatre in the Late Medieval Period Lofton L. Durham III, PhD University of Pittsburgh, 2009 Jacques Milet's nearly 30,000-line French mystery play, Istoire de la Destruction de Troie la Grant [Story of the Destruction of Troy the Great], written in 1450, has been marginalized by theatre historians despite its 13 manuscripts (some with extensive illustrations) and 13 print editions dating until the mid-sixteenth century. As a play that treated its non-religious subject seriously, Destruction de Troie neither fits precisely with the spectacular religious cycles, nor with late medieval moralities and comedies, all genres which grew in popularity during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. However, Destruction de Troie's subject, the "matter of Troy," situates the play in the mainstream of the fictional universes appropriated by a range of groups--including sovereigns and their courts, civic guilds, and artists and writers of all varieties--for social and political purposes. And, the long list of surviving copies demonstrates how effectively the play captured the spirit of its time. Consequently, this dissertation uses Destruction de Troie as a prism through which to view the connections among political, economic, and social events, performance varieties and practices, and circulating literary and ideological concepts. Although much of direct evidence for performance remains inconclusive, the strength of the correspondence between the performance forms, tastes, and customs near the places where Destruction de Troie originated and circulated, and the traces of those practices in the text and images of various extant copies, supports the idea that the play was much more representative of iv the broader performance and literary cultures dominant at the time. The play's particular attention to political matters as demonstrated in its Épître épilogative [Letter of Epilogue], as well as the ideological orientation of the play's Prologue, reinforce the important relationship of performance to power. Viewed from this vantage point, a more complete picture of the culture emerges than that seen from the perspective of a few spectacular Passion-play performances and late medieval comedies. By establishing relationships in, around, and through Milet's dramatization, this dissertation argues that Destruction de Troie, far from being an exception, is in fact emblematic of trends in performance and culture in late medieval France. v TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................ vi LIST OF TABLES .....................................................................................................................viii LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................ x 1.0 INTRODUCTION: AN UNEXAMINED EXCEPTION................................................. 1 2.0 CHAPTER ONE: ASSUMPTIONS AND EVIDENCE ................................................... 8 2.1 HISTORIOGRAPHICAL BACKGROUND ............................................................ 8 2.2 MANUSCRIPT, CODEX, AND TEXT................................................................... 25 2.3 PRINT, TEXT, AND IMAGE .................................................................................. 46 3.0 CHAPTER TWO: HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXTS SURROUNDING DESTRUCTION DE TROIE ...................................................................................................... 62 3.1 MILET: HIS LIFE AND WORKS ......................................................................... 62 3.2 ZOOMING IN: THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.................................................... 70 3.2.1 Political and Military Events ........................................................................ 72 3.2.2 Diversity, Demographic Recovery, and Economic Activity ....................... 77 3.3 CULTURAL AND ARTISTIC MILIEUX.............................................................. 83 3.3.1 Burgundy: Rehearsing the Theatre-State.................................................... 85 3.3.2 Other Cultural Milieux: Anjou-Provence and Savoy............................... 105 vi 3.3.3 A Sketch of the Orléanais Performance Context ...................................... 112 4.0 CHAPTER THREE: TRACES OF PERFORMANCE .............................................. 118 4.1 DEBATING DIRECT EVIDENCE ....................................................................... 118 4.2 COMMENTS ON METHODS............................................................................... 124 4.3 MILET'S MOUVANCE: PICTORIAL EVIDENCE AND PERFORMANCE . 137 4.3.1 Physical Features and Art Historical Context for the Illustrated Manuscripts .............................................................................................................. 140 4.3.2 The Example of P4 ....................................................................................... 145 4.3.3 The Examples of P5 and O .......................................................................... 186 5.0 CHAPTER FOUR: INTEGRATING PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE: IDEOLOGICAL AND LITERARY ASPECTS OF DESTRUCTION DE TROIE ............. 193 5.1 THE MYTH OF TROY AND IDEOLOGICAL PROJECTIONS OF THE STATE............................................................................................................................... 195 5.2 THE "MIRROR OF PRINCES": READING THE ÉPÎTRE ÉPILOGATIVE. 209 5.3 LITERARY TRADITIONS AND INNOVATIONS ............................................ 237 5.3.1 Verse Forms and their Functions ............................................................... 245 5.3.2 Shared Aspects of the Grands Rhétoriqueurs............................................. 255 6.0 CONCLUSION: INTO THE MAINSTREAM ............................................................. 260 APPENDIX A: MANUSCRIPT SOURCES IN LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES IN FRANCE AND ENGLAND, BY REPOSITORY .................................................................. 264 BIBLIOGRAPHY..................................................................................................................... 268 vii LIST OF TABLES Table 1. Jung's List of Destruction de Troie Manuscripts........................................................... 26 Table 2. Known Destruction Early Print Editions, after Runnalls. ............................................. 47 viii LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Extant MSS of Medieval French "Religious" Theatre, by Genre.................................21 Figure 2. Number of Extant MSS by Title....................................................................................22 ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The author of L'Istoire de la Destruction de Troie la Grant is variously known as Jacques Milet or Millet. Louis Petit de Julleville, the nineteenth century historian and bibliographer of French mystery plays--and some others, as recently as 2007--have used the spelling "Millet," but I have followed the bibliographic standard in WorldCat, which uses "Milet." The latter spelling also occurs more often in the manuscripts and early print editions of the play. In preparing this study, I have used Edmund Stengel's 1883 transcription of the 1484 first print edition (this edition is now lost) when referring to pages and line numbers. The Prologue (lines 1 through 328) is numbered separately from the play (lines 1 through 27984). When citing stage directions, which Stengel left out of his lineation, I add the letters "sd" after the line number, indicating that the stage direction occurs immediately after that line. In cases where I quote from other versions, I use the published abbreviations for manuscripts (A, B, E, G, O, P1 through P5, Pe, and Y) and early print editions (a through m). Since these other versions are not lineated, I cite where possible the folio number, with the notation "r" for "recto" and "v" for "verso"--as in "382r" or "16v." When quoting from Jacques Milet's prose Épître épilogative, I cite Marc-René Jung's critical edition, published in 1978 in the Mélanges Rychner. Jung's edition is paginated, but not lineated; thus I cite only page numbers. x All translations of primary documents, except where cited, are my own. The completion of any PhD dissertation is both the culmination of years of labor, and highly dependent on the efforts of others. In my case, this includes not only the scholars with whom I engage in these pages, but also my colleagues and professors at Pitt, and most importantly, my family,