Masters Theses

Date of Award

12-1992

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

French

Major Professor

Paul Barrette

Abstract

This thesis presents a mathematical demonstration and an analysis of the structure of the thirteenth century La vie du pape Saint Grègoire. It is based on the diplomatic edition of the text prepared by Hendrik Bastiaan Sol, which is based on the A1 text, with limited borrowings from both the A2 and A3 texts to fill lacunae.

Numerous critics have dealt with this poem in the past, but only in as much as it posed a problem in establishing a text or the bearing it might have on the Middle High German Gregoriusof Hartmann von Aue. No one has explored the purpose and structure of the poem previously.

The thesis is divided into five chapters: Chapter I is concerned with the Prologue (lines 1-64) and the first quarter of the story (lines 65 - 766); Chapter II treats the second quarter of the poem (lines 767 - 1221); Chapter III deals with the third quarter of the story (lines 1222 - 2002); Chapter IV examines the fourth quarter of the story (lines 2003 - 2770) and the Epilogue (lines 2771- 2812); Chapter V is a study of the structure of the poem.

The purpose of the poem is essentially didactic. The poet is interested in demonstrating a moral, that is the virtue of asceticism and strict penance practiced in this tradition. In the poem, the poet presents the life of the mythic pope Saint Grégoire in order to show the possibilities that may be achieved by a follower of this tradition. Indeed, Grégoire's example would be a reason for hope for believers whose sins are of a more mundane variety. Grègoire, after all, is charged with expiating sins that are horrific in their rarity: son of an incestuous brother and sister, Grégoire later marries his mother/aunt. When this fact is discovered, he immediately begins a harsh program of penance in an attempt to save his soul; he is ultimately so successful that he is chosen as pope through divine intervention and later takes his place among the saints in heaven as one of the holiest.

The poem proves to be an effective demonstration of the moral truth which it tries to establish. The art of the poet in establishing the worth of the tradition that he expounds is quite in fitting with the work's q.e.d.The story proceeds in an extremely step-wise fashion, with virtually no detail that is not part of the demonstration. This is not to say that the poem lacks more art than mere exposition: the poet employs many subtle devices in order to heighten the effect of the demonstration among which are number symbolism, typology, and recapitulation.

In order to fully appreciate the demonstration, the technique employed was to search for the implicit in what the poet himself has already made explicit and the most effective means of achieving this is to proceed in a step-wise explication. Through this pain- staking attention to detail, the true proportions of the poem are more clearly revealed. Thus the main thrust of this study is to make clear these aspects of the art of the poem.

A further interest of this study is to examine the structure of the poem in light of the results of the examination proposed above to see if the poet constructed the poem with the demonstration in mind rather than composing it in a haphazard manner. While major divisions in the story offer little in symmetry when considering the proportions sheerly by the number of lines, the study establishes that there was a high degree of symmetry in the poem when it is considered episodically rather than by lines.

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