Distance and Intimacy in Baudri of Bourgueil's Libellus

Abstract

Abstract Baudri of Bourgueil, c. 1046-1150, collected his personal poems in a single manuscript, copied and decorated under his supervision, which he circulated only to close friends. He was a well-regarded and effective abbot, a humanist, and a classicist, in a period of reforms with which he did not fully agree, and he expressed fears about harsh criticism and the possibilities of being shamed. Many of the poems in Baudri’s collections are in the form of letters, some of which seem to express erotic attractions, particularly homoerotic attractions, which may have been one source of his anxieties and the reason he did not circulate the manuscript. Remarkably, the manuscript survived, though it seems to have gone unrecognized until the mid-seventeenth century, when scholars began writing about it. Because it existed in only the one copy, until relatively recently scholarship tended to focus on individual poems, rather than the work as a whole, which led to possibly erotic poems being read out of context. This thesis focuses on the section of the manuscript considered by editors of recent scholarly editions to have been prepared under Baudri’s direct supervision, designated here as the libellus (little book). The thesis carries out close readings in the context of the libellus as a deliberate work. Chapter I, “Introduction,” provides a brief biography of Baudri, a survey of scholarship about his manuscript with a focus on discussions about sexuality in his work, and explains the thesis’s application of queer theory to discover new approaches to the libellus, particularly through exploring the ways Baudri experiences temporalities. Chapter II , “The Libellus Structure and Poem Arrangement,” presents evidence that the libellus is arranged as a chiastic ring structure, in which the end connects to the beginning and, considered from the center of the work, the sections have a mirror-image symmetry. Through close readings of the first three poems of the collection, Chapter II discusses ways these poems reveal concerns about sexuality indirectly, both within individual poems and through adjacent poems’ implied mutual commentaries. Chapter III, “Funerary Poems as a Graveyard,” considers a section of funerary poems which Baudri wrote and collected as forming an imaginary graveyard, a heterotopia, or other-world, in which Baudri could express intense personal feelings and kinds of mourning that he could not express in public. Much of this expression is conveyed through the arrangement of the poems. Chapter IV, “Ars Poetica and Appeals to Current and Future Readers,” focuses on the center of the libellus, which consists mainly of poems to other writers and poems about Baudri’s writing. Through close readings of four poems, the chapter compiles Baudri’s reflections on the relationship of the writer to the poem and the writer to readers and his contradictory claims that nothing he writes is true. Chapter V, “‘Adelae Comitissae’ as Heterotopia,” is a close reading of Baudri’s long ekphrastic poem to Countess Adela of Blois. The chapter focuses on Baudri’s relationship to Adela, as portrayed in the poem, made possible by the heterotopia he creates for Adela. The heterotopia is a detailed description of an imaginary private room for reading and reflection, containing artworks that represent multiple temporalities. Chapter VI, “Conclusion,” returns to the ring structure of the libellus and discusses how the end connects to the beginning.