Michel Zink
Literatures of medieval France
" Medieval letters crystallize all the associations between the past and literature, all the indications that an essential link unites the notion of literature with a feeling for the past. The curiosity aroused by medieval literature since its rediscovery at the dawn of Romanticism presupposes such associations. The forms of this literature itself conceal such clues. They invite us to embrace with a single glance the interest of the modern age in the medieval past and the signs of the past with which the Middle Ages mark their own literature. What's more, they invite us to look to the relationship with the past as a criterion for defining literature, a task that is particularly necessary in an age when the word is not understood in its modern sense, and when the very existence of the corresponding notion is uncertain. "
Zink M., Littératures de la France médiévale, Paris, Collège de France/Fayard, coll. " Leçons inaugurales du Collège de France ",no. 131, 1995, 36 p.; digital edition: Collège de France, September 2013, https://doi.org/10.4000/books.cdf.1114.
