Book review - Representing the Dead: Epitaph Fictions in Late-Medieval France

Abstract

The introduction to Representing the Dead is a valuable resource in itself. There, Helen Swift defines the terms, and discusses the literary epitaph’s use of language and versification, audience involvement, and, among much else, its differences from, and relationships with, elegy, testament, complaint, and plainte funèbre. Swift refers to late medieval French writing, including that of André de La Vigne, Jean Molinet, Octavien de Saint-Gelais, Jean Lemaire, Alain Chartier, and François Villon, with meticulous translations. But her study is not chronologically or linguistically narrow, and for instance she cites Christos Tsagalis on the uses of the ‘short obituary’ in the Iliad. Her findings, which take into account recent scholarship and critical theory, are of great use for all scholars interested in the relationship between identity (name, renown, reputation) and death as both threat to identity and ‘condition for its creation’ (p. 4).