The Refrain and the Rise of the Vernacular in Medieval French Music and Poetry

The relationship between song quotation and the elevation of French as a literary language that could challenge the cultural authority of Latin is the focus of this book. It approaches this phenomenon through a close examination of the refrain a short phrase of music and text quoted intertextually across thirteenth- and early fourteenth-century musical and poetic genres. The author draws on a wide range of case studies to show that medieval composers quoted refrains as vernacular auctoritates; she also articulates a new framework for understanding the emergence of the first two named authors of vernacular polyphonic music the cleric-trouvères Adam de la Halle and Guillaume de Machaut.