Jonathan Fruoco, FRHistS (born 1987) is a French historian who specializes in medieval English literature, with a specific focus on the

polyphony Polyphony ( ) is a type of musical texture consisting of two or more simultaneous lines of independent melody, as opposed to a musical texture with just one voice ( monophony) or a texture with one dominant melodic voice accompanied by chord ...

Geoffrey Chaucer Geoffrey Chaucer ( ; – 25 October 1400) was an English poet, author, and civil servant best known for ''The Canterbury Tales''. He has been called the "father of English literature", or, alternatively, the "father of English poetry". He w ...

's poetry, and historical

sociolinguistics Sociolinguistics is the descriptive, scientific study of how language is shaped by, and used differently within, any given society. The field largely looks at how a language changes between distinct social groups, as well as how it varies unde ...

. In 2022, he was elected a Fellow of the

Royal Historical Society The Royal Historical Society (RHS), founded in 1868, is a learned society of the United Kingdom which advances scholarly studies of history. Origins The society was founded and received its royal charter in 1868. Until 1872 it was known as the H ...

. He is notably the first translator and editor of the medieval

Robin Hood Robin Hood is a legendary noble outlaw, heroic outlaw originally depicted in English folklore and subsequently featured in literature, theatre, and cinema. According to legend, he was a highly skilled archer and swordsman. In some versions o ...

poems in French and has directed a research project leading to the development of the notion of serial imaginary.

Biography

Dr. Fruoco was trained as a sociolinguist at Université Grenoble Alpes and then focused his interest on the cultural and linguistic evolution of medieval England. He greatly contributed to the studies on Chaucerian polyphony, having published three books on the subject (''Geoffrey Chaucer: polyphonie et modernité'' in 2015 and ''Chaucer's Polyphony: The Modern in Medieval Poetry'' in 2020, and ''Polyphony and the Modern'' in 2021), and dozens of articles. He posits that Chaucer, who has long been considered as the father of English poetry, should rather be thought of as the father of English prose and one of the main creators of the polyphonic novel, in the Bakhtinian sense of the word. Besides his work as a medievalist, Dr. Fruoco has edited and translated for the very first time in French a selection of medieval poems and plays about

published in the award-winning ''Les faits et gestes de Robin des Bois'' (UGA Editions, 2017). These texts, which had long been unknown to French academics and general readers, track the birth and evolution of this legendary character from the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

to the end of the

Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...

. As Associate researcher at Université Grenoble Alpes, he organized a series of conferences that put forward the concept of imaginary and tried to understand how it functions when faced with serial works of art. This research led to the coinage of serial imaginary and was illustrated in ''Imaginaire sériel: Les mécanismes sériels à l'oeuvre dans l'acte créatif'', (Jonathan Fruoco and Andréa Rando Martin (Ed.), Grenoble, UGA Edition, 2017).

Recent Publications

* Blanc, William, Breton, Justine and Fruoco, Jonathan. ''Robin des Bois. De Sherwood à Hollywood.'' Montreuil: Libertalia, 2024. * Fruoco, Jonathan (ed.). ''Unveiling the Green Knight.'' Nanterre: Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre, 2024. * Fruoco, Jonathan. ''Geoffrey Chaucer. Troïlus et Criseyde: oeuvres complètes'' (Tome II). Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2023. * Fruoco, Jonathan. ''Geoffrey Chaucer. Le Livre de la Duchesse: oeuvres complètes'' (Tome I). Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2021. *Fruoco, Jonathan. ''Polyphony and the Modern.'' London: Routledge, 2021. *Fruoco, Jonathan. ''Chaucer's Polyphony: The Modern in Medieval Poetry''. Kalamazoo, Berling: MIP, De Gruyter, 2020. * Fruoco, Jonathan. "Geoffrey Chaucer et le dédale de Renommée". ''Questes'' 42. Paris: Presses Universitaires de la Sorbonne, 2020. * Fruoco, Jonathan. "Si l’or doit rouiller, que deviendra le fer ? Chaucer et les représentations du Pardonneur dans les Contes de Canterbury". ''Mélanges de Science'' ''Religieuses'' 76/4. Lille: FLSH de l’Université Catholique de Lille, 2019, p. 5-18. * Fruoco, Jonathan. "Emergence des vernaculaires et traductions du sacré dans l’Europe médiévale : le cas de conscience de l’Église". ‘Translatio’ and the History of Ideas: Ideas, language, politics. Volume 1 Edited by Anna Kukułka-Wojtasik. Berne: Peter Lang. 2019, p. 169-176. * Fruoco, Jonathan. "Geoffrey Chaucer, ''The Merchant’s Tale'' et la dialectique de l’élévation". IRIS, Ed. Fleur Vigneron, Université Grenoble Alpes, n°39, 2019
On line
03 Septembre 2019. * Fruoco, Jonathan. ''Les faits et gestes de Robin des Bois : poèmes, ballades et saynètes''. Grenoble: UGA Éditions, 2017. * Fruoco, Jonathan, Laimé, Arnaud, Rando Martin, Andréa (Ed.). ''Imaginaire sériel: Les mécanismes sériels à l'oeuvre dans l'acte créatif''. Grenoble: UGA Éditions, 2017.

External links

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fruoco, Jonathan 1987 births Living people French medievalists 21st-century French translators Sociolinguists Grenoble Alpes University alumni