YEARBOOK OF THE ALAMIRE FOUNDATION

84 LUMINITA FLOREA
At any rate, this particular figura is a visual metaphor for poetic concepts stated or
implied in the text, depicting a labyrinth as the frame (staves) for a ballade whose
text reprised and manipulated the theme of Dedalus. The poem had Ovidian overtones
26 and the graphics prompted the reader to meander from labyrinth seen to
labyrinth invoked, and beyond, as the eye and mind journeyed through a constellation
of symbolic meanings surrounding the concept. It must have been a constellation
quite familiar to the medieval decoder.
One need not stretch one’s imagination to find circumstances under which the
copyist of the ballade could have seen the pertinent drawing in some book on a subject
other than music: texts of Classical mythology in both verse and prose, in both
Latin and some vernacular translation or adaptation, were readily available in the
fourteenth century. In fact, Ovid’s poetic works, even the more explicitly amorous
ones, were highly favored throughout the later Middle Ages – to the extent that the
period comprised between the twelfth and the fourteenth centuries is known as aetas
ovidiana. 27 The labyrinth (also known as le dédale, la maison Dédalus, la lieue, and
le chemin de Jérusalem) and, by extension, its architect Dedalus and the characters
involved in the legend as told by Ovid in Book VIII of his Metamorphoses were part
of the conventional vocabulary of fourteenth-century erotic poetry; at least one other
known musical composition from the 1390s, Pierre Taillandier’s ballade Se Dedalus
in Chantilly, Musée Condé, MS 564, is based in part on these much-visited metaphors.
28
Equally favored were general encyclopedic compilations such as the Liber
floridus authored by Lambert, canon of Saint-Omer (c. 1060–1125), a widely-read
book that included sections on theology, astronomy, geography, philosophy, natural
history, and mythology. The autograph manuscript of the Liber, an exemplar produced
over several years and finished in 1120, was possibly brought to the Abbey of
26 En la maison Dedalus enferme/e est madame vers qui ne puis aller/ Car je ni voi issue ni entrée/ par
ou je puisse a son gent corps parler// Dont maint souspir me convient estrangler/ et en tourment me
conviendra languir/ se ne la voy briefment mestuet morir// Car cest la flour de mon cuer desiree/ nult
ne treuve qui mi sache mener/ Cest tout bien mamour et ma pensee/ ne ie nay nulle aultre rien a penser/
etc. I have transcribed the text from the digital reproduction mounted on the Digital scriptorium, see
note 22 above.
27 See E. PELLEGRIN, Les Remedia amoris d’Ovide, texte scolaire médiéval, in Bibliothèques retrouvées:
Manuscrits, Bibliothèques et Bibliophiles du Moyen Age et de la Renaissance, Paris, 1988, pp.
409–416; article originally published in Bibliothèque de l’École des Chartes, 115 (1957), pp. 172–179.
28 Transcribed and edited in G.K. GREENE and T. SCULLY, Manuscript Chantilly, Musée Condé 564,
(Polyphonic Music of the Fourteenth Century, 19), Monaco, 1982, pp. 49–51; the gallery of mythological
personages invoked by the lover in this ballade are Dedalus, Jupiter, Zephirus, and Narcissus.
For Taillandier, see M. GÓMEZ, art. Tailhandier [Taillandier], Pierre [Talhanderii, Petrus; Talhienderi,
Petrus], in L. MACY ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music Online (accessed 1 September
2004), .