Reviews
"Smith links the popularity of the pastourelle with anxieties about changing social and economic conditions, whereby the bourgeoisie were gaining power and influence at the expense of the aristocratic class."
--Medium Aevum
"An interesting and wide-ranging work of scholarship, with implications for several critical discussions within medieval literary studies."
--Medieval Review
"Sheds new light on the evolving concept of author in the Middle Ages."
--Fabula, la recherche en litterature
"Anyone with an interest in the pastourelle form and its evolution will find this book invaluable, similarly those concerned with Adam, Froissart, or Christine. Smith's broader enquiry into questions of authorship, genre, gender, voice, and ideology in medieval literature makes this an important book for any medievalist."
--The Journal of Speculum, vol.85 n.4
“This fascinating study has brought together three innovative authors whose pastourelles now echo one another in enriched ways. Geri Smith’s sustained probing, patient quoting, extensive scholarly knowledge, and perceptive comparisons between texts and critical material make this study of poetic motivations and generic transformations in the Medieval French pastourelle a delightful scholarly innovation in itself.”
--Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching