La mise en scène des voix narratives dans la réécriture de la “Belle dame sans mercy” par Anne de Graville

Abstract

This article focuses on Anne de Graville’s Rondeaux, a rewriting of Alain Chartier’s Belle dame sans mercy, transmitted by the single manuscript Paris, BnF, fr. 2253. Firstly, the analysis of both the layout and the re-elaboration techniques will allow us to observe that the work brings to the stage a plurality of voices, which correspond to socially well-defined characters, according to the interpretation of the rhetorical conception of the “character”, theorized in the tenth chapter of the Instructif de seconde rhétorique. Furthermore, a thematic investigation based on some lexical choices will show that a particular attention is reserved to the presence of images evoking the game of roles between the lady and the knight; we will finally advance the hypothesis that the Rondeaux take part in a virtual “collaborative community” diachronically engaged in the rewriting of Chartier’s masterpiece.