of recently passed Australian Ph . D . theses

The early fourteenth century Clmnsonnier of the Oxford Bodleian MS Douce 308 is unique among Old French chansonniers in its arrangement of texts according to genre. Because there are no melodies to any of the five hundred and sixteen texts the Chansonnier has been largely ignored by musicologists, despite the fact that a large proportion of the lyrics are known only from this manuscript. This study examines the texts in a way which is different from, yet complementary to, the examination of notated chansons and chansonniers. It examines the way in which the scribes of this lyric anthology have constructed a clear organizational framework for the exposition of the texts and in doing so have presented the poetic forms of the texts on the page. Manuscript examples and diplomatic editions of the texts provide evidence of the structural and scribal features examined in the study. An understanding of the organizational principles and practices followed by the scribes comes from an analysis of the scribal presentation of all the texts of the genre sections and from the examination of these three aspects: the codicological structures, the scribal hands and the decoration of the Chansonnier. These features of scribal organization are examined in relation to the physical and conceptual framework of the complete MS Douce 308 in which the Chansonnier resides. The discovery of two scribal hands in the Chansonnier has led to a re-evaluation of past studies and descriptions of the Clmnsonnier. The implications of this discovery for our understanding of the relationship between the structures and the scribes of the Chansonnier are examined here. The study also demonstrates a methodology which is appropriate to the study of manuscript sources in general.