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Philip Daileader, Jean-Claude Schmitt. Les rythmes au Moyen Âge., The American Historical Review, Volume 123, Issue 1, February 2018, Pages 284–285, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/123.1.284
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Jean-Claude Schmitt, already one of the foremost cultural historians of medieval Europe, has produced in Les rythmes au Moyen Âge a strikingly original and ambitious book. Defining rhythm as “une structure périodique en mouvement” (65), Schmitt demonstrates its ubiquity in the Middle Ages. As shown in the book’s opening two chapters, medieval authors discussed rhythm in a limited range of contexts, largely confined to poetry and music, whereas their nineteenth- and twentieth-century counterparts discussed rhythm more expansively. Nonetheless, Schmitt argues, the “periodic structure” of rhythm shaped most every form of medieval cultural production and practice, and many facets of existence.
Les rythmes is divided into six “days” (journées), with each “day” consisting of several chapters (there are twenty-one in total). This structure is unconventional, but not without precedent—Schmitt’s acknowledged model is the biblical book of Genesis, whose rhythmic account of the six days of creation frequently inspired medieval authors to employ six-part divisions. The first day juxtaposes what modern and medieval authors wrote about rhythm, and discusses how rhythm functioned in medieval music and literature. The second day examines rhythms associated with the natural world and the human body, including rhythmic movement of the feet (walking, dancing) and hands (writing), as well as rhythmic medical and procreative practices. Day three examines calendrical and temporal rhythms associated with the passage of years, days, and hours. Day four examines rhythmic travel such as processions and pilgrimages. Day five examines rhythmic elements in medieval historical writing and thinking. The sixth day, “Changes of Rhythms,” consists of three chapters showing how innovations, individualization (individuation, defined here as ontogenesis, or the continuous development of the human individual), and interruption (arythmie) affected medieval rhythms. The chapter on innovations discusses a bevy of changes, including how the imposition of seigniorial dues brought new rhythms of peasant payments to lords, the spread of wage labor brought new rhythms of remuneration for workers, the growth of government brought new bureaucratic rhythms, and the emergence of Jubilee years brought new rhythms of religious observance. The chapter on individualization examines rhythms associated with personal religious items such as rosaries or with commemorations of individual life events such as birthdays. The chapter on interruption focuses on the threats to rhythm posed by insufficiency, excess, natural catastrophe, ecclesiastical sanction (sentences of interdict that suspended religious services), and workers’ strikes. It also addresses how medieval utopian thinkers, as represented in the Fabliau de Cocagne, understood utopia in terms of the suspension or sometimes the acceleration of rhythms.
