ABSTRACT
Qualities of voice are difficult to capture, or even to intuit, in the Middle Ages. Medieval sources in the realm of both speech and song generally hide more than they reveal of the characteristic timbres, accents, and articulations that constitute the distinctive physical properties of language in all its varied manifestations. Paul Zumthor famously coined the term mouvance to express the idea that textual differences between versions of many kinds of poems, and especially of songs, really represent far more than just local or incidental variation. They are, he argued, the characteristic result of a much more radical – and often powerfully interventionist –attitude to 'versions' and 'readings' on the part of performers. It is the signature of vocality within the very substance of the poetic text that serves to give it its distinctive expressive edge and grain.
