Du rebond parodique

Abstract

During the XIIIth century, burghers and trouveres of the North went and theatricalise the fin’amor throughout the jeu-parti. If several pieces of the Recueil general des jeux-partis francais betray some sort of « parodic temptation » (the XIV, XV, XVI, XIX, XX pieces and above all the CXXXVIII one), none of them has the radical nature of a parody that can be found in the CLXXIV et CLXXV pieces, entirely inspired by the Sottes Chansons of Ms. Douce 308.It is in Lorraine, a land usually considered as hardly representative of modern medieval literature, that about 1305-1310 there appears a final attempt at reviving the already somewhat worn-out machinery of the courtly debate. The ambition of the small literary coterie gathered at the court of Jean de Bar around Roland de Reims, no more no less, was, it seems, to ravish the light to the Arras avant-garde while its star was fading. Besides, the same circles in Lorraine are probably also at the origin of the Sottes Chansons of Ms. Douce 308, which inspire, in the same manuscript, the two parodic jeux-partis. This would corroborate the idea of an eastward migration of modern literature at the dawn of XIVth century.