Le fou et sa maison: Rutebeuf et la topique de la détresse

Abstract

Whilst in the narrative discourse the madman’s distress and solitude are depicted through the image of the forest, in the thirteenth century allegedly personal poetry, it is the destitution of a squalid room that locks up the madman and his misery. This shift from the narrative to the lyric, to the dit—commonly defined as a type of poetry based on a feigned confession—corresponds to a change of the social background. Unlike the madman of the medieval novel who, lost in the desert of the forest, contrasts with the courtly universe, with the world of the castle, the poet lives his alienation in his home-town. Developing the traditional topics of the badly wed intellectual and of the gambling ruined juggler, Rutebeuf objectifies at the same time a pattern which emphasizes the desolated setting. First, this article propose an analysis of these aspects in order to observe the consolidation of a stereotype noticeable later on in Villon’s poetry. This approach implies also the observation of the correspondence between the rhetoric aspect of Rutebeuf’s “madness” and the symptoms of mental illness, a perspective so far less considered by literary criticism. Then, this article questions the expression of madness and poverty in relation to the satire aiming at the mendicant orders and running across Rutebeuf’s work. Thus, the desolation of the background itself and the solitary confinement stand for a satirical echo of the saint’s conventional settlement. Behind the distorted confidence, the play with literary patterns reveals the parodic portrait of the “God’s fool”.