Allégorie et construction de mythes chez Michault Taillevent : le Songe de la Th oison d’Or

Abstract

This article is about Michault Taillevent’s allegorical dream-poem, the Songe de la Th oison d’Or, which was written in the 1430s to commemorate the founding of Philip the Good’s proto-chivalric Order of the Golden Fleece. I examine the ways in which vernacular poetry in the later Middle Ages conveyed and shaped knowledge – both knowledge of the world (transmitted, for example, through didactic or political discourse) and knowledge of itself (for instance, that adduced through the social role fulfilled by poetry, or its technical aspects). The study involves close analysis of the narrative schema of the allegorical dream, considering both its intertextual resonances and the kinds of knowledge it reveals, followed by an examination of the poet’s use of a mythologized historical past. I suggest that these techniques allow Taillevent’s poem to produce the same effect as he claims to be achieved by the Ordre. Just as the mantle and collar permit Philip and his companions to reach Bonne Renommee’s table, so the cloak of allegorical poetry raises them to the same ontological level as the classical, Biblical and early medieval heroes that Taillevent adduces.