Vous consultezLes récits idylliques de la fin du Moyen Âge (de Jehan et Blonde à Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelonne) : la postérité de Jean Renart ?

The Idyllic Tales of the End of the Middle Ages (from Jehan et Blonde to Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelonne) : Jean Renart’s posterity ?
This contribution raises questions on the influence that Jean Renart’s L’Escoufle, a work not much appreciated in its time but celebrated by modern criticism, may have had on the idyllic romances of the end of the Middle Ages. The neglect that has today befallen these late works, a series of fantastic adventures and tender effusions of love, conceals their enormous popularity between the end of the 13th and the 15th Century. Indeed, Jehan et Blonde, Eledus et Serene, Pierre de Provence et la belle Maguelonne, Paris et Vienne, and a prose version of Florimont have thematic and stylistic affinities with Jean Renart’s first romance. But although L’Escoufle seems to have provided the narrative framework for these stories, the idyllic narratives of the end of the Middle Ages reveal a tendency to obliterate the model’s boldness in favor of a moralizing tone. Similarly, they efface the potentially subversive character of childish love affairs to reconcile them with the imperatives of society and lineage. Such a filiation suggests that the success of L’Escoufle was less confidential than it seemed, but also does justice to late idyllic romances, often neglected by literary criticism.

Keywords

idyllic romance, Jean Renart’s L’Escoufle, rewriting, reception of texts, influence