Textual reliquaries : authority in Old French hagiography and its codices

This dissertation focuses on early saints' lives in their manuscript context in order to show that this neglected, yet once exceedingly popular, narrative genre rivals secular romance, both in terms of literary self-consciousness and stylistic innovation. Contrary to most studies, which consider these poems individually and from a sociological or religious perspective, mine concentrates on individual pieces particularly as they relate to the larger context of the manuscript anthology, taking into account the scribal editors who organize such collections. In the first chapter, I study the medieval references to writing and books in a series of Old French hagiographic texts, and then apply these criteria to one specific thirteenth-century manuscript, BN fr. 2162. in the three remaining chapters, I present three particular codices which I believe exemplify literary authority of the period: BN fr. 24766, BN fr. 13513, and BN nouv. acq. 4503. This study sheds new light on the complexities of this little-studied genre, as well as on the medieval anthologies which preserve them.