Research Project

Three Objectives in the Studies of Medieval Literary Texts

Michel Zink was Professor of Literatures of Medieval France at the Collège de France when he received the Balzan Prize. Professor Zink used the second half to achieve three objectives: conferences on the circulation and translation of medieval literary texts; fellowships for young researchers in Romance Philology; and support for publications.

The first conference on the circulation and translation of medieval literary texts was entitled Lire un texte vieilli, du Moyen Âge à nos jours and took place from 1 to 3 April 2009 at the Collège de France. A preparatory session in regard to the second conference was organized with Anna Maria Babbi (Università di Verona) on the topic Écrire dans la langue de l’autre. This was held at the Palazzo Guerrieri Gonzaga, Villa Lagarina (TN), Italy, on 13 May 2010, when the paper Raimbaut de Vaqueiras. La poésie comme langue de l’autre was presented. The conference, entitled D’autres langues que la mienne, was held in the Great Hall Marguerite de Navarre of the Collège de France on 10 and 11 May 2012.

A fellowship program, Prix de recherche en philologie romane, made it possible for a young researcher to live and work in Paris for up to a year. In 2009, the first fellowship was awarded to Chiara Concina. The second was awarded in 2011 to Hedzer Uulders who, under Professor Sylvie Lefèvre (Columbia University), helped put together an edition of Saluts d’amour (love poems in the form of letters), to be published in the Lettres gothiques collection. In 2013 the third fellowship was awarded to Daniele Ruini.

As regards publications, a research group working with the Prizewinner on the project L’Europe des philologues was concerned with the publication of the correspondence of the great Romanists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The first part, Gaston Paris – Joseph Bédier, also supported by the Fonds national suisse de la recherche scientifique, appeared in 2009. The research funds from the Balzan Prize also made it possible for the collection Lettres gothiques (Le Livre de Poche, Hachette) to include important works from the beginning of the fourteenth century, and for the publisher Les Belles Lettres to publish and sell an entirely new and truly outstanding dictionary of Old and Middle French at an accessible price for students. The author is a Japanese scholar working under the Prizewinner’s supervision.

Publications
Conferences on the circulation and translation of medieval literary texts
Zink, Michel. Livres anciens, lectures vivantes. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2010.
Zink, Michel, with the collaboration of Odile Bombarde. D’autres langues que la
mienne. Paris: Odile Jacob, 2014.

L’Europe des philologues
Bähler, Ursula and Alain Corbellari eds. Gaston Paris, Joseph Bédier. Correspondance. Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo per la Fondazione Ezio Franceschini, 2009.
Bähler, Ursula, ed. Gaston Paris, Karl Bartsch. Correspondance entièrement revue et complétée par Ursula Bähler à partir de l’édition de Mario Roques. Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo per la Fondazione Ezio Franceschini, 2015.
Ridoux, Charles, with Ursula Bähler, eds. Gaston Paris, Paul Meyer. Correspondance. Florence: Edizioni del Galluzzo per la Fondazione Ezio Franceschini, forthcoming.

Lettres gothiques
Beaune, Colette, ed. Chronique dite de Jean Venette. Lettres gothiques. Paris: Hachette, 2011.
Pinto-Mathieu, Elisabeth, ed. Baudouin de Flandre. Lettres gothiques. Paris: Hachette, 2011.
Strubel, Armand, ed. Le Roman de Fauvel. Lettres gothiques. Paris: Hachette, 2012. Dauphant, Clotilde, ed. Eustache Deschamps. Anthologie. Lettres gothiques. Paris: Hachette, 2014.
Zufferey, François and Valérie Fasseur, eds. Flamenca. Lettres gothiques. Paris:
Hachette, 2014 (La Grange Prize of the Académie des inscriptions et belles-lettres). Maupeu, Philippe and Robert Edwards, eds. Le Livre du Pèlerin de vie humaine de Guillaume de Deguileville. Lettres gothiques. Paris: Hachette, 2015.
Lefèvre, Sylvie, Hedzer Uulders, et al., eds. Lettres d’amour du Moyen Âge: Les Saluts et Complaintes. Lettres gothiques. Paris: Hachette, 2016.

Dictionary
Matsumura, Takeshi. Dictionnaire du français médiéval. Sous la direction de Michel Zink. Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2015.

Recent books by Michel Zink
Zink, Michel. Les Troubadours. Une histoire poétique. Paris: Perrin, 2013, (Provins Moyen Âge Prize). Italian translation by Federico Saviotti. Preface by Maria Luisa Meneghetti. I trovatori: una storia poetica, Milano: Mimesis, 2015.
Zink, Michel. Bienvenue au Moyen Âge. Paris: France inter – Équateurs, 2015.


Excerpt from the: The Balzan Prizewinners’ Research Projects: An Overview 2018