Musical "Beastliness" in the Roman de Fauvel (BN fr. 146): Chaillou's "addicions" and Sensory Danger

Taking Gervais' grisly description of Fauvel as my starting point, this thesis considers the relation between themes of "beastliness" as figured by Gervias and Chaillou's Fauvel and themes of "beastliness" as presented by Chaillou's interpolated items in the Roman de Fauvel, with special emphasis on music and its interactions with text and image. More specifically, I analyze how late medieval ontologies of "beastliness" inform the representation of Fauvel in fr. 146, as well as acts of musical representation in the manuscript through considering its epistemological significance as both visual sign and sonorous object. By attempting to show how "beastliness" affects the signification of music in the Roman de Fauvel and, inversely, how certain episodes of musical insertions contribute to an aesthetic of Fauvelian "beastliness," I hope to broaden our appreciation of Fauvel's ingenious beastly aesthetics, and its capacity to inform musical ontologies of the later Middle Ages.