Jean Lemaire de Belges's Rhetorical Masks in L’Amant Vert and “Les Regretz de la Dame Infortunée”

Abstract

A prominent feature of the poetry of Franco-Burgundian poet and rhetorician Jean Lemaire de Belges (1473–1524) is his use of a rhetorical mask—a persona—through which to proffer his utterances and assert his identity. Because the early sixteenth-century court poet's financially and politically subservient position vis-à-vis powerful aristocratic patrons demands an encomiastic rhetoric that leaves little room for the poet's self-assertion within the body of the poetic text, Lemaire must employ the indirect means of a narrative mask to assert his own existence and concerns. This article examines first the narrative mask of the parrot-lover in the 1505 Epîtres de l’Amant Vert, through which Lemaire is able to voice concerns about his precarious position as a writer almost entirely at the mercy of his patron's good health and good will. A discussion of “Les Regretz de la Dame Infortunée” (1506) follows, in which Lemaire takes an intriguing narratological stance that unites his voice to that of his patroness, Margaret of Austria (1480–1530), ultimately forging an authorial je that speaks for both poet and patron. This nearly mystical union of narrative voices allows Lemaire to express his own concerns about the volatility of the patronage system while concomitantly giving voice to Margaret's mourning at the death of her brother, Philip the Handsome (1478–1506).