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Document Details :

Title: À propos d'un ouvrage récent sur la Chronique de Morée
Subtitle: Contribution au débat
Author(s): BLANCHET, Marie-Hélène , SAINT-GUILLAIN, Guillaume
Journal: Byzantion
Volume: 83    Date: 2013   
Pages: 13-39
DOI: 10.2143/BYZ.83.0.2988908

Abstract :
The Chronicle of Morea is the only narrative source concerned exclusively with the history of the Peloponnese in the later Middle Ages and the most important literary text produced in Latin Greece. Its versions, manuscripts and history have been the subject of much scholarly debate, and a recent book by Teresa Shawcross intends to reconsider the evidence anew. Focusing on the history of the text, this paper discusses some of the solutions she proposes concerning the lost archetype of the chronicle, its language and the social context of its production as well as the history of the Italian and French versions. More specifically, we argue that the evidence she advances for a new chronology and South-Italian origin of the French version of the chronicle and of its only manuscript, and concerning the transmission of this version to Northern Europe, must be dismissed. Rather, the only manuscript of the French version was most probably produced in the Greek world at the end of the fourteenth century, before entering the collections of the dukes of Burgundy.

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