James Baldwin Essay Prize

Ruhland received his BA in French and Italian from the University of Geneva and an MA in French Literature and Culture from King’s College, London. His dissertation examines 13th- to 14th-century manuscripts composed of more than one text, arguing that the incongruence among the texts composing such a manuscript served an important purpose: dissonances in theme, tone, or logic required readers to engage in dialectical thinking, leading them to consider critical questions such as how gender or cultural conventions shaped knowledge and narratives. “The Practice of Debate in French Literature Before Machaut” derived from Ruhland’s dissertation research, identifies a rich tradition of debate literature during the period leading up to the career of the early 14th-century composer and poet Guillaume de Machaut, whose work literary scholars have traditionally seen as inaugurating debate literature. Arguing that debate in literature is a matter of practice rather than genre, Ruhland shows how two manuscripts of the early fourteenth century practice debate in different ways, the first through illumination and the second by a juxtaposition of texts in conversation with one another. He then resituates Machaut’s narratives, not as inaugurating a new genre, but instead as continuing a thriving and varied practice of debate in medieval French literature.