SOURCE: “A Sketch of Joinville's Prose Style,” in Mediaeval Studies, edited by Urban T. Holmes, Jr., Harvard University Press, 1948, pp. 71–80.

In the essay that follows, Hatzfeld provides a technical analysis of Joinville's style and descriptive methodology in Vie de Saint Louis.

Histories of Old French Literature of the future will present a new schema; besides the customary type and amount of information, they will include style sketches of the individual authors. These sketches will be objective if they are based on correct analysis, not on impressions. They will be unequivocal if they place in relief the nuances in the single forms of expression, and if they stress the uniqueness of the style elements in their constellation.

As a first attempt of the sort, I present, in the following lines, a sketch of Joinville's style. In contributing to this volume dedicated to Professor Ford, I should have preferred, however...