Trees, Dogs and the Homosocial Bond: Tentamina (Roman des sept sages de Rome) as a Medieval Ecological Tale
(2018) International Conference on Ecocriticism and Environmental Studies — Location: London (20.October.2018)
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- Abstract
- The Romance of the seven sages is a stories-within-a-story of Eastern origin that had a vast success in the Middle Ages and was variously translated and creatively rearranged across Europe. The most ancient of its Western versions, the French verse Le roman des sept sages de Rome (second half of the 12th century), strikes us for the concentration of environment-related tales: since the frame story deals with an accusation of infidelity, the tales tend to discuss cases of disputed love, and several of them describe tragic stories of human affection towards plants and animals. How do the contrasting attitudes expressed by the characters of these tales and the morality bestowed upon them by the narrating voices in the frame story contribute to draw the lines of a complex pre-modern ecology? In the proposed paper, I will discuss the special non-human bonds related in one of these tales, Tentamina: in this tale, a noblewoman tries to enrage her husband by destroying all his love objects - a pear tree, a hound, and his vassals’ esteem. In the light of the other “ecological” tales of the Roman, I will untangle the vegetal, the animal and the human agents of Tentamina, the agenda of its fictional narrators, and the textual form in which they all participate. The purpose of this analysis will be to highlight the ecocritical aspects of this polyphonic text, focusing on the interplay between environment, love and storytelling they stage.
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Sciancalepore, A. (2018). Trees, Dogs and the Homosocial Bond: Tentamina (Roman des sept sages de Rome) as a Medieval Ecological Tale. International Conference on Ecocriticism and Environmental Studies, London. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/127176