SOURCE: “The Word at Heart: Aucassin et Nicolette as a Medieval Comedy of Language,” in Yale French Studies, No. 45, 1970, pp. 33-51.

In the following essay, Vance studies the form and language of Aucassin et Nicolette and suggests that the poem is an examination of the function of literary language.

Throughout the Latin middle ages there was speculation about the function of language and the potency of the word. Classical antiquity had provided a system of rhetoric and a mature theory of signs, but these were at once challenged and transformed in Christian culture by the doctrine that in the beginning God “spoke” the world of things, and after the Fall God spoke again in Christ the Word so that fallen man could again approach God. As St. Augustine said,

All other things may be expressed in some way; He alone is ineffable, Who spoke, and all things were...