Jean Renart

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Jean Renart (also Jehan Renart or Jean Renaut ) is an old French poet of courtly poems and novels, who worked in the first half of the 13th century. He was born in the Ile de France and lived at the court of the Count of Boulogne . In a publication from 1999 Rita Lejeune cites elements that seem to prove that behind the pseudonym Jean Renart Hugues de Pierrepont , 1200 to 1229 Prince-Bishop of Liège , is hiding.

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L'Escoufle , a 1902 verse novel dedicated to a Count of Hainaut , deals with the theme of love prevented by the father, linked to the theme of the predatory bird, a kite holding a valuable object (a ring - pledge of love) stolen. Guillaume de Montivilliers , son of the Roman emperor's advisor, is promised to Aenis, the emperor's daughter. After the death of Guillaume's father, the emperor breaks his promise and the young couple flees to France. On the way, a Milan Guillaume snatches an Aumônière - a filled dough bag - which Aelis had given him beforehand and which also contains a ring. Guillaume then goes in search of the bird. The lovers remain separated for a long time and only find their way back to one another after numerous peripheral attacks .

The Lai de l'Ombre , a courtly novella consisting of 962 verses , tells of a knight who is in love with a lady who, however, resists him and refuses the ring he offers her. He then announces that he will give the ring to the object he loves most immediately after her and throws the ring into a fountain to give it to the mirror image (shadow - l'ombre ) of the lady who is in the water reflected. The lady, seduced by this ingenious trick, granted the knight her love from then on.

The Roman de la Rose or Guillaume de Dole is dedicated to Milon de Nanteuil , Count Bishop of Beauvais .

Much more famous is the Roman de la Rose ( The novel of the rose ), known under the name Guillaume de Dole or Wilhelm von Dole , as it was named by the humanistic medievalist Claude Fauchet after one of the protagonists , to avoid confusion with the rose novel by Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meung to avoid. The story revolves around the theme of the wager for a woman's chastity, including a historical background - that between 1197 and 1218 through the death of Henry VI. triggered throne dispute in the Holy Roman Empire . Emperor Konrad falls in love with Liénor, Wilhelm von Doles' sister , because of a trobador song, but without having seen her beforehand. He invites her brother to the court, where he excels in a tournament . The emperor's old servant, jealous of the newcomer , now turns to Dole. Through a trick he learns an intimate detail about the young girl from Liénor's mother: she has a heart-shaped birthmark on her thigh. So the old servant can claim to the emperor that she gave herself to him. Liénor decides to expose the impostor. She sends him a bag of dough filled with a ring, a pin and a belt on the pretext that he is from a lady whom he had previously courted in vain. Then she goes to the emperor's court and pretends that the old servant had offended her and stole the objects that she had previously given him. The old servant now swears that he has never seen the young girl before and Liénor reveals himself to be the "maid with the rose" and thus convicts the old servant, who is then sent on a crusade . Then she marries the emperor. In this text, Jean Renart's allusions to true contemporary events, omitting wonderful elements that were characteristic of the Breton tradition, manifest a striving for topicality that steers the novel towards realism . Renart is also the first author to include lyrical vocal parts in the work, which accompany and comment on the plot. This was soon adopted by other authors.

rating

“Both novels do not offer a fairytale story (like the Breton novels), but rather stories that take place in familiar geography and familiar social surroundings. The protagonists do not wait for knightly adventures that they have to endure, but live in a world in which they have to take their lives into their own hands ... One recognizes [..] that the nobility and the urban bourgeoisie are together, not against each other Act. Not for the ideology of the novels, but for the way of life and taste of the characters acting in them, it is characteristic that they are interested in literature. What is only hinted at in L'Escoufle ( reading novels in Aelis) is strutrell and constitutive in terms of content for Guillaume de Dole : the courtly society or individuals sing old songs (they are artfully inserted into the text), dance to them or listen them too. Dealing with literature (on the level of characters and narration) and the ideological reorientation are obviously moments that the author values. The distance to Chrétien's view is considerable. Note, however, that Jean Renart's novels are also courtly novels in which courtly behavior and courtly norms are presented. "

"An elegant and aristocratic poet whose entire work is characterized by courtly refinement".

“Jean Renart is one of the finest poets of his time; his authorship of Fablieau Auberee and the novel Galeran de Bretagne is controversial. "

literature

expenditure

  • Jean Renart, L'Escoufle, roman d'aventure . New edition based on manuscript 6565 of the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal by Franklin Sweetser, Genève, Droz, 1974 (Textes littéraires français, 211)
  • Jean Renart, L'Escoufle, roman d'aventure . Translation into New French by Alexandre Micha, Paris, Champion, 1992 (Traductions des Classiques français du Moyen Âge, 48).
  • Jean Renart, Le Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole , Rita Lejeune (ed.), Paris, Droz, 1936.
  • Jean Renart, Le Roman de la Rose ou de Guillaume de Dole , Félix Lecoy (ed.), Paris, Champion, 1962 (Classiques français du Moyen Âge, 91).
  • Jean Renart, Guillaume de Dole ou le Roman de la Rose, roman courtois du XIII siècle , translated into New French by Jean Dufournet, Jacques Kooijman, René Ménage and Christine Tronc, Paris, Champion, 1988 (Traductions des Classiques français du Moyen Âge, 27 ).
  • Jean Renart, Lai de l'Ombre , Félix Lecoy (eds.), Paris, Champion, 1979 (Classiques français du Moyen Âge, 104)

Secondary literature

  • Rita Lejeune , L'œuvre de Jean Renart , Liège, Paris, Droz, 1935.
  • Rita Lejeune, "Jean Renart, pseudonyms littéraire de l'évêque de Liège, Hugues de Pierrepont (1200-1229)", Revue belge de philologie et d'histoire, 77: 2, 1999, pp. 271-297.
  • Sylvie Lefèvre, "Jean Renart", In: Robert Bossuat, Louis Pichard and Guy Raynaud de Lage (dir.), Dictionnaire des lettres françaises, t. 1: Moyen Âge, éd. entièrement revue et mise à jour sous la dir. de Geneviève Hasenohr et Michel Zink , Paris, Fayard, 1994, pp. 838-841.

Remarks

  1. ↑ a b c cf. Laffont-Bompiani. Dictionnaire Encyclopédique de la Littérature Française . Editions Robert Laffont SA, Paris, 1999, p. 848
  2. ^ A b c Winfried Engler : Lexicon of French Literature (= Kröner's pocket edition . Volume 388). 2nd, improved and enlarged edition. Kröner, Stuttgart 1984, ISBN 3-520-38802-2 , p. 511.
  3. ↑ see also Prince-Bishop
  4. ↑ an Escoufle is a Milan
  5. ↑ Bishop-elect in 1217, consecrated in 1222, returning from the crusade and died in 1234. The specialists date this novel to 1208-1210 (Rita Lejeune, ed. Of 1936), both of which are from 1228 (Félix Lecoy, ed . from 1962)
  6. ^ Rita Lejeune-Dehousse, L'Oeuvre de Jean Renart: Contribution à l'étude du genre Romance au Moyen Age, E. Droz, Lieg, Paris, 1935
  7. ^ Todd, p. 144
  8. ↑ L'Escoufle and Guillaume de Dole
  9. ↑ Mölk, Ulrich. In: Grimm, Jürgen . French literary history . Metzler Verlag, 1994, p. 59.

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Jean Renart
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Jehan Renart, Jean Renaut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Old French poet
DATE OF BIRTH 12th century or 13th century
DATE OF DEATH 13th Century