Book Reviews

Summary

Bouhaïk-Gironès, Marie. Les clercs de la Basoche et le thèâtre comique: Paris, 1420–1550. Paris: Honorè Champion, 2007. Pp. 309.

In this revised version of her doctoral dissertation, Bouhaïk-Gironès (henceforth BG) lets the reader discover a wealth of thoroughly researched archival material, in light of which she offers a new social, professional, and cultural history of the Basoche, a late-medieval community of law clerks affiliated with the Parliament of Paris. Archival research is also applied to the influence of the Basoche on comic theater during the years 1420–1550, aiming to dispel the “mythe littèraire” (24) which has dominated this field of investigation, as BG argues. Her book is comprised of three parts.

BG's introduction offers a helpful overview of the scholarship devoted to late-medieval comic theater, followed by a detailed analysis of historical studies treating specifically the Basoche. The strengths and weaknesses of the seminal works of Adolphe Fabre (1856–75), Howard Graham Harvey (1941), and Jody Enders (1992), including their use of archival sources, are then assessed. BG also insists on the limitations of archival research, blemishes which she attributes to gaps in the documentation of the law clerks' activities; the theatrical events during the period of investigation are curtailed as well for the same reason.