Orelhas de elefante, olhos de coruja, dentes de javali: maravilhoso e descritivo em Yvain ou le chevalier au lion, de Chrétien de Troyes

Abstract

CALIENDO, L. C. K. Elephant ears, owl eyes, boar teeth: marvelous and descriptive in Chretien de Troyes' Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion. 2009. 154 f. Masters degree dissertation — Faculty of Philosophy, Letters and Human Sciences, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2009. At the end of the twelfth century, Chretien de Troyes — considered by many critics the greatest French poet of the so-called Middle Ages — produced a narrative poem — Yvain ou le Chevalier au Lion — in which one perceives elements considered characteristic of the genre known as marvelous, such as magical objects and extraordinary beings, like monsters and giants. These elements — among other factors — led much of the criticism to see in medieval poetry, for a long time, some innocence, typical of a ―childhood of literature‖. Rejecting an evolutionary perspective, this study aims at looking at this ancient text respecting its otherness, but at the same time, bringing it to the center of current literature debates. A close look at the poem brings out the intimate relationship between the marvelous and the descriptive, main subject of the present study. Through the reading of the portrait of a monstrous peasant — taken in its textuality, avoiding an artificial separation between ―form‖ and ―content‖ — a shift is promoted in the concept of marvelous, no longer seen as a set of motifs, but as an effect of discursive operations. Key-words: marvelous, descriptive, description, medieval poetry, medieval ―literature‖, Chretien de Troyes.