The Art of Flowers, Silks, and Stones: Ekphrastic Literary Fashioning in Floire et Blancheflor and its Receptions in Later French and Italian Medieval Literature

Abstract

This study of Robert d’Orbigny’s Old French ‘aristocratique’ Li Conte de Floire et Blancheflor (c. 1170) and its receptions in Guillaume de Lorris’ first part of Le Roman de la Rose (c. 1230), and Giovanni Boccaccio’s later Italian version of the story, Il Filocolo (1335 – 1336), seeks to reassess Floire et Blancheflor in the light of current scholarly discourses concerning, among other things, ekphrasis and medieval conceptions of nature, recognising it as a work of exceptional ekphrastic and self-reflexive richness interested above all else in its own artefactuality. An argument is presented that Robert d’Orbigny’s poem is chiefly concerned with presenting a vivid series of hyper-realistic artefacts, including (both actual and artificial) flowers, silks, and stones, that repeatedly blur the boundaries between art and nature and in doing so contribute to the construction of a sophisticated dialogue about poetic composition. Later chapters examine the reappearance and refashioning of many of the same ekphrastically treated artefacts that characterise and form the subject of Floire et Blancheflor within the Roman de la Rose and the Filocolo, where they become thresholds into other spaces – sites of intertextual exchange and transportation.