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Queeste. Tijdschrift over middeleeuwse letterkunde in de Nederlanden. Jaargang 2005 (2005)

Queeste. Tijdschrift over middeleeuwse letterkunde in de Nederlanden. Jaargang 2005

(2005)– [tijdschrift] Queeste–rechtenstatus Auteursrechtelijk beschermd

Vorige Volgende

Accounts of a Royal Entry
Genre, Audience, and History in Froissart's Chronicles and Pastourelles
Kristen M. Figg

When Isabeau of Bavaria made her entry into Paris as queen of France in August of 1389, the event was widely recognized as one of the most elaborate entries ever celebrated.1 In later years, as Jean Froissart's Chroniques were copied into luxuriously illuminated manuscripts, his account of this entry became one of the most frequently illustrated episodes, serving as the subject of the frontispiece for seven extant copies of Book 4 (see Figure 1).2 These images capture quite faithfully the grandeur of the city scenes with gates and buildings draped in costly fabrics, theatrical castles constructed for the presentation of living tableaux, and the cortège of accompanying lords and ladies on horseback and litters. But what the illustrations do not capture is the ambiguous or even sinister tone of Froissart's account, what George T. Diller has referred to as a certain ‘uneasiness’3 that comes from the author's inclusion of details that strike a note of discord: a crowd so big that it threatens to disrupt the procession, a reception dinner where a window must be broken to admit fresh air, a joust disrupted because of dust, and so on. As Diller's article suggests, these passages do not support the old view of Froissart as an author who was merely a naïve defender of a dying social order.4 But Diller stops short of providing a clear explanation for the content of these passages when he claims that Froissart has created a text in which ‘he alone is the true protagonist.’ Rather, I would like to suggest that such deliberate selection of detail reflects not just Froissart's sense of his own importance as an author shaping public opinion, but also his masterful control of the narrative genre he has created, a form of story-telling that, above all else, depends upon careful analysis of his audience and the creation of patterns of suspense and meaningful repetition. While these rhetorical manipulations may not always be apparent from examination of the chronicle text alone, their effects - and their purpose - become much clearer as this prose account is compared with its counterpart in Froissart's collection of historical pastourelles, a small but important group of fixed-form poems that present historical materials in an entirely different, essentially non-historical, mode.

On first consideration, Froissart's sense of audience and purpose in his Chroniques would not seem to be overly complex, and, indeed, for years some historians dismissed



illustratie
Fig. 1 Isabeau of Bavaria being welcomed by the bishop at Notre-Dame (British Library, ms Harley 4379, f. 3).


the work as little more than an exaggerated recounting of contemporary events written by a conservative apologist for a dying chivalric order. In the opening lines of his Prologue to Book I, Froissart says that his purpose is to ‘place on record’ events that have taken place in the wars between France and England, and he seems to define his audience narrowly as those who would be inspired to imitate the exploits of the ‘brave men’ who have undertaken the ‘honorable enterprises, noble adventures and deeds of arms.’5 Although his first book was essentially a rewriting into prose of the verse chronicle of Jean le Bel, which covered events up to 1360-61, he soon developed a narrative style of his own, reinforcing his authority by offering what seems to be a direct record of his conversations with informants and enriching the genre with a kind of ‘characterization through dialogue’ in dramatic scenes rich with concrete detail,6 exactly the sort of thing that would inspire readers to imitate the book's heroes. In more recent analyses, however, critics have suggested that the purpose of the text goes far beyond a simple desire to perpetuate the current system. William Calin has noted the similarities between the pacing of events in Froissart's chronicle and the interface structure of medieval romances, which involve ‘multiple actions committed by multiple heroes,’ with repercussions of single events often delayed for years or even generations.7 Likewise, Peter Ainsworth speaks of ‘significant resonances’ that are ‘achieved progressively’ when ‘episodes are linked not so much by chronological or topical logic as by symbol, echo, or metonymy, or indeed when their most obvious textual or thematic correlative lies beyond the immediate episode concerned.’8 Such a text, then, is destined not only for an immediate audience of like-minded aristocrats, but also for a more thoughtful cross-section of the readers in the temps advenir that Froissart so often invokes.9

It is not surprising that Froissart was able to draw on the sophisticated literary responses of his audience, given that he himself was an accomplished and well-known poet. Indeed, his poetic works encompass over 65,000 lines of verse in both narrative and lyric genres. Among the most original of these is the historical pastourelle, a genre that Froissart is believed to have invented during his early years in the English court, where, beginning in 1361, he served Queen Philippa as a sort of unofficial secretary and, apparently, court poet.10 The traditional pastourelle was a genre in decline, since the basic story of a nobleman who attempts to seduce a shepherdess, and either succeeds or fails in his attempts to win her over, seemed by the fourteenth century to

have exhausted its potential for freshness. Froissart, however, recognized in the genre a rich possibility for juxtaposing aristocratie and rustic points of view, and he followed a pattern of experimentation introduced by other court poets who had heightened the emphasis on cultural difference by transforming the knight/narrator from an active participant - that is, a suitor - to a disinterested aristocratie observer.11 Froissart found that this genre, comprising five stanzas plus an envoy and ranging from 60 to 85 lines, allowed him to report on the details of peasant life in a way that would entertain a court audience by bringing before them, in evening readings, images of contemporary life in the countryside, with charming dramatizations of pastoral courtships or even ironie portrayals of the way peasants interpreted the latest aristocratie styles.12 In contrast to the abstract language and conventional sentiments required by the fixed form lyrics on courtly love (which Froissart wrote in abundance),13 the vivid descriptions typical of the pastourelles offered a way of talking about the real world and inviting his audience to imagine, in a succinct vignette, what might be said and done outside the walls of the aristocratie court.

It is probably an appreciation of this combination of immediacy and perspective that led Froissart to consider going one step further to discussing actual current events in his poems. Having begun research as early as 1356 on the project of chronicling the early stages of the Hundred Years' War, he had by the early 1360s moved from his rewriting of the verse Chronicle of Jean le Bel to gathering information of his own, an effort that no doubt motivated his voyage to Scotland in 1365 and certainly inspired his later travels throughout France, the Low Countries, Italy, and Provence. When major events occurred, one must imagine him taking notes, a practice he documents himself in his Chroniques some years later.14 From those notes, of course, would come the permanent written record that Froissart hoped would be the source of his fame when he was, as he put it, ‘dead and rotten,’15 but these same notes also provided material for topical or occasional poems that were better suited to direct oral presentation in court. Thus it was in the form of a pastourelle that Froissart described the passage of king John of France, Jean le Bon, from Eltham to London, on the occasion of his widely praised decision to return voluntarily to captivity after his son, Louis, broke the terms of the Treaty of Brétigny by returning to France without permission.16 Like-

wise, Froissart offers an amusing depiction of peasant reaction to the striking of a new coin in France in 1364 (Pastourelle 3). Some years later, in 1382, while in the service of Guy of Blois, he depicts peasants expressing both jubilation and concern over Charles VI's victorious crossing of the Lys, with a prediction that the Flemish ‘cannot last long’ against the French (Contre nous ne poront durer, line 76), as indeed they did not (Pastourelle 7). The future tense verb in this line indicates that the poem must have been recited before the battle of Roosebeke, a decisive event that took place only a matter of days after the crossing and one which dominates the account in the Chroniques. What we seem to have, then, in the pastourelles, is a record of how Froissart chose to present an historical event not for posterity, but in a nearly contemporaneous, often celebratory, oral performance to an audience who had themselves either witnessed the event or had personal connections to those involved in it.

The full complexity of Froissart's potential for developing a range of poetic and non-poetic treatments of history can be seen in his multiple responses to a key event of 1372, the release of his patron, Wenceslas of Brabant, from a year-long period of captivity following capture by his neighbor, the Duke Guillaume of Juliers. In the most factually direct of his three accounts, Froissart's Chroniques report, both in summary and in detail, in two separate passages, the dispute leading up to the Battle of Baesweiler, the combat and capture itself (22 August 1371), the negotiations attempted by Emperor Charles IV, and the emperor's impressive expedition - accompanied by four archbishops, seven bishops, and several aristocratic allies - to threaten Guillaume into submission and assure Wenceslas' release.17 This account, written in retrospect for the thoughtful reader that the chronicler envisages in future centuries, attempts to reveal both the character of the main participants and the processes by which war, and later peace, were achieved.

Yet, as interested as Froissart was in the politics and negotiations among his realworld contemporaries, he also felt moved to write about this same series of events in an entirely different mode, making a clear separation between what he considered appropriate content for his prose history and the kind of immediate homage he could create in poetry. In this case, his desire to honor his patron led him to write one of his most complex narrative poems, La Prison Amoureuse, which involves an exchange of letters between a character named ‘Rose’ and the narrator poet (here known as ‘Flos’), who carries on a long literary correspondence with his imprisoned friend on the topic of the art of writing lyric poetry.18 Froissart's patron is never directly identified in the poem, but a central passage clearly takes the rather mundane series of political events that began in 1368, when merchants from Brabant first suffered attacks as they passed through the neighboring duchy of Juliers, and transforms them into a dream allegory (Le Songe de Rose, 2230-3393), where the main character's adversary is named Orgueil and his rescuer is an eagle. Although Froissart is best known for his admiration of feats of arms and chivalric behavior, which he hoped to memorialize and perpetuate through the direct reporting of his chronicles, this recontextualizing of his patron

as an aspiring poet conversant in the psychology of love suggests that he saw the chivalric sensibility as part of a multi-layered propensity for refined behavior of all kinds, each of which could be expressed only in an appropriate genre. While the account in the Chroniques was intended for ‘posterity’ (though clearly tailored for a succession of patrons),19 the narrative poem was written for Wenceslas himself, depicting and interpreting battle, captivity, and release in the sort of metaphoric mode that would appeal to a man who aspired to write serious poetry and who had recently experienced a long period of relative isolation, inactivity, and self-examination.

In contrast, then, to both the historical accounts and the long narrative poem, the pastourelle treating Wenceslas' release, the sixth in the collection, can be best understood as a text intended for immediate oral presentation in an atmosphere of celebration. As would be appropriate to such an occasion, the poet seems to have in mind not only the desire to entertain, but also the need to perform certain obligatory courtesies. The poem - appropriately simple in its content - depicts a group of shepherds and shepherdesses as they happily share the news of the Duke's return (...le duch ravons, Dieu merci!), describing first his prowess in the battle where he was taken (comme noble et vaillans homs), then his wide reputation. The fourth stanza is dedicated to the circumstances of his return, with reference to l'empereour, qui tant est bons, / Son frere (Charles IV), who is given full and proper credit for the successful release, while the final stanza speaks of the shepherds' relief at having their protector back, since now they can again be assured of the safety of their flocks. Self-congratulatory in tone, the poem nonetheless reminds the duke that his importance as an aristocrat depends upon the proper discharge of his responsibilities, as well as suggesting to all present that he must recognize a deep obligation to his brother. By reducing the retelling of the event to only the information that would spread among the simplest members of the society and putting it into a predictable and lightly humorous verse form, Froissart achieves a distillation of effect completely different in tone and content from the involved interlacement of repeated, patterned events that makes up his retrospective on history.

The paired historical and poetic accounts of Wenceslas' return do not offer any special problems of interpretation: the pastourelle is short on facts, and its generic distinctness from the more complete prose version in the Chroniques is quite apparent. But the accounts of Isabeau's entry into Paris are more problematic, since there are some contradictions of detail between the two texts, and the wealth of description in the chronicle is in itself so remarkable as to require some justification. Looking mainly at the details of the ceremonies and the systematic documentation of participation at all levels of society, Bernard Ribemont, for example, has suggested in his study of the prose account that Froissart is thinking in practical terms of the need to document how such an event is to be carried out, since coronations are not an everyday occurrence and this particular one marks a change in tradition that will not be fully documented in the usual ecclesiastical source, the Chroniques de Saint-Denis:

Le chroniqueur est ... conscient de cette nouveauté et de l'importance dont l'entrée parisienne d'Isabeau est rev^etue car il se propose de décrire la cérémonie pour l'instruction de la postérité. Sa chronique, mise en mémoire, est aussi la mise en place d'un ordo futur.20

Ribemont adds that such an event requires that the different orders of society converge towards a common goal, and in this sense the entry serves a unifying purpose, illustrating a harmony based on strict hierarchy according to traditional values. Thus, this reading points to the multiple uses of a text, which might in this case provide both the literal guidelines for future ceremonies and the encouragement of unification across classes - or, as I will argue, a critical assessment of the state of the aristocracy and the difficulties of its role in the larger society, a goal much larger and more complex than the simple self-congratulation that appears in the pastourelle.

A quick outline of the scenes and details in the chronicle account of Isabeau's entry into Paris provides some idea of the multiple points of focus from which Froissart could choose in retelling the story. As the prose version tells it, Paris was so crowded the procession could hardly pass. Twelve hundred citizens of Paris on horseback lined the roadway, dressed in matching tunics of green and crimson silk. The queen and the other ladies were transported in decorated litters, with a male escort headed by the Dukes of Touraine and Bourbon, followed by other lords and ladies (named or not named, according to rank), mounted or in carriages. Streets were adorned with hangings and displays, following the popular pattern of associating such events with biblical, classical, and French historical themes.21 This version moves the reader scene by scene through the details of numerous tableaux vivants, beginning with one at the Gate of Saint-Denis, showing a starry heaven with angels and an image of Holy Virgin and infant; another at the fountain of Rue Saint-Denis, whence flowed ‘streams of honied and spiced wine’ (et donnoit cette fontaine par ses conduits claret et piment très bon et par grands rieus ...) offered up by young girls ‘richly dressed’ and ‘singing very tunefully’ (jeunes filles très richement ornées... lesquelles chantoient très mélodieusement); another with a raised platform where knights reenacted a battle scene between Richard Lionheart and the Saracens; and another with a mural representing heaven and choir-boys dressed as angels, one of whom descended and placed a crown on Isabeau's head. In addition to descriptions of other living tableaux, there is an account of a tight-rope walker who performed acrobatie tricks on a rope extending from the highest tower of Notre Dame, followed by details of the Queen's reception by the Bishop of Paris, her prayers and coronation, the procession back to the palace by the light of five hundred tapers, the banquet entertainment, and a detailed enumeration of the gifts presented to the queen by the citizens of Paris: a boat of gold, two great flagons of gold, two comfit dishes of gold, two salt-cellars of gold, six gold pots, and so on.22

But none of this - though it was clearly in Froissart's notes - is what turns up in the pastourelle. For at least in its initial performance, many of those who would hear the poem would have already seen the sumptuous arrangements, so a catalog of details, while necessary for readers in faraway places and later times, was not necessary for them. What they wanted to know, apparently, was how the occasion had ‘played’, whether it had made the desired impression, and it is exactly this reassurance that the fictional shepherds' point of view can provide. Indeed, while one might at first interpret Froissart's chronicle account as being self-congratulatory because it mentions, for example, that the total value of the gifts to the King, the Queen and the Duchess of Touraine had amounted to more than sixty thousand gold crowns (soixante mille couronnes d'or), it is important to note that Froissart's point here is to emphasize how the gifts served as ‘a sign of the wealth and power of the Parisians’ (la grand'valeur des présens et aussi la puissance des Parisiens).23 It is, in fact, in the pastourelle - much more than in the chronicle account - that we see the unabashed attempt to support aristocratie interests for which Froissart was long criticized by modern historians.

The contrast between the poem and the historical account is immediately apparent. After the poem fulfills a requirement of the genre by beginning in stanzas one and two with some good-natured teasing over the reporting shepherd's level of credibility, it moves quickly in stanza three through a very general summary of the main events - that there had been a dinner, a visit to Saint-Denis, and a great procession of lords and ladies ‘richly adorned’ - and then, in stanza four, reaches its climax in a challenge to the shepherd to name the principle lords. The shepherd points out, quite naturalistically, and in keeping with the account in the Chroniques, that he nearly had his stomach squashed (esquaté la pance) by the huge crowds he encountered in getting his information, a circumstance which takes on a much more threatening significance in the Chroniques. Here, however, this image of close proximity is (again, as required by the genre) merely comic evidence that he will certainly be able to perform his task as a credible reporter successfully which, of course, he proceeds to do, beginning with the line je vous assine premier (‘I point out to you first’) Jean Duc de Berry, followed in the next line by the Duke of Burgundy. We do not know who might have been in the original audience for this pastourelle, but in the chronicle version, Burgundy and Berry, whose daughter had married the son of Froissart's patron, Guy of Blois, only two years earlier, are mentioned second, after the opening statement that the Queen's escort was headed by Touraine and Bourbon; and Lorraine, who in the poem is ambiguously associated with the other aristocrats only by the fact that he was seen ‘in a very good coat made of fine fabric’ (en un jupel / D'un riche drap qui fu moult bons) was not, in fact, mentioned by name at all. One can easily imagine that there is something of an insiders' joke here, where those present would be waiting to hear how certain names were worked into the entertainment, with the salient point coming at the end, when the poet concludes that he ‘certainly believes that this event / Will be spoken of in many a land’:

 
Que bien croi que de l'ordenance
 
On pariera en maint paÿs
 
Comment la royne de France
 
Est premiers entree en Paris. (67-70)

Like a skillful newscaster who understands the importance of ratings, Froissart uses the point of view of the traditional shepherds to suggest the point of view of the world, and in doing this he reassures his audience, in the most light-hearted manner, that the expensive and exhausting plan of carrying out this entry had worked its magic.

For posterity, on the other hand, the facts would need to be recorded in a different way, and it is interesting that the poet makes direct reference to this as he ends his pastourelle with the traditional envoy. ‘Prince,’ he says ‘to assure that all this will be remembered, as well as to honor the fleur de lys, I have thoroughly recorded the matter elsewhere’ (Prince, pour faire ent souvenance, / J'ai bien mis aillours la substance...) - referring, obviously, to his draft of the Chroniques. One could, of course, argue that the chronicle version, as I have already described it, simply expands into several hundreds of lines the impressive catalog of name-dropping, spectacle, and wealth that is begun in the pastourelle on a small and personal scale. But close examination of the text suggests that Froissart's artistic or narrative aims were more complex, and his view of the experience of the nobles considerably more subtle.

The difference in tone between the two genres is perhaps most apparent in the chronicle account of the dinner at the Palace on the day after the procession, which he introduces with a two-fold comment:

... Des mets qui étoient grands et notables, ne vous ai-je que faire de tenir compte; mais je vous parlerai des entremets qui y furent, qui si bien étoient ordonnés que on ne pourroit mieux, et eût été pour le roi et pour les dames très gran'plaisance à voir, si cils qui entrepris avoient à jouer pussent avoir joué. [my emphasis]24

Clearly with such an introduction, Froissart is preparing here, not for the comforting insiders' version of the procession we heard in the pastourelle, but for a real piece of drama, which recalls the possibility of risk that pervades Froissart's chronicle accounts of battles and political intrigue. As the story proceeds, one can recognize both an extension of the classical symbolism that had inspired many of the earlier tableaux and decorations, and a delight in the technology that has allowed this particular display. At the same time, however, there is an oddly resonant suggestion that the grandeur of the ancient mythology associated with the celebration will carry with it its tragic outcomes as well:

Au milieu du palais avoit un châtel ouvré et charpenté en carrure de quarante pieds de haut et de vingt pieds de long et de vingt pieds d'aile; et avoit quatre tours sur les quatre quartiers, et une tour plus haute assez au milieu du châtel; et étoit figuré le châtel pour la cité de Troie

la grande, et la tour du milieu pour le palais de Ilion. Et là étoient en pennons les armes des Troyens, telles que du roi Priam, du preux Hector son fils et de ses autres enfans, et aussi des rois et des princes qui enclos furent en Troie avecques eux. Et alloit ce châtel sur quatre roues qui tournoient par dedans moult subtilement. Et vinrent ce château requerre et assaillir autres gens d'un lez qui étoient en un pavillon, lequel pareillement alloit sur roues couvertement et subtilement, car on ne véoit rien du mouvement;...Encore y avoit, si comme en leur aide, une nef très proprement faite, où bien pouvoient être cent hommes d'armes...25

The description continues in this laudatory vein for a few more lines and then the tone changes:

Mais l'ébattement ne put longuement durer pour la cause de la grand'presse de gens qui l'environnoient. Et là eut des gens par la chaleur échauffés, et par presse moult mésaisés. Et fut une table séant au lez devers l'huis de parlement, où grand'foison de dames et damoiselles étoient assises, de force ruée terre; et convint les dames et demoiselles qui y séoient, soudainement et sans arroy lever, par l'échauffement de la presse et de la grand'chaleur qui étoit au palais. La roine de France fut sur le point d'être moult mésaisée; et couvint une verriére rompre qui étoit derrière li pour avoir vent et air. La dame de Coucy fut pareillement trop fort mésaisée. Le roi de France s'aperçut bien de cette affaire; si commanda à cesser. On cessa; et furent les tables levées et abattues soudainement, pour les dames et damoiselles ètre au large. On se délivra de donner vin et épices. Et se retrait chacun et chacune, tantôt que le roi et la roine furent retraits en leurs chambres.26

The story of the celebration ends abruptly at this point, and Froissart's account moves on to the details of the very successful presentation of gifts that took place the next day. But, as Diller has pointed out, Froissart's emphasis on the confusion at the banquet has already worked against the overall impression of unalloyed royal power that one would assume to be the goal of the event and, by extension, the goal of the text recording it. Unlike the pastourelle, where it is only a shepherd who suffers a bit of a squashing as he negotiates the crowd at the procession, the chronicle includes several indications that those planning and participating in the events are vulnerable as well, as when Froissart points out that it seems as if ‘the whole population’ of Paris had turned out for the procession so that ‘the serjeants-at-arms and the King's officers had

hard work to clear a way through the crowds’ (et vous dis que sergens d'armes et officiers du roi étoient tous embesognés à faire voie et rompre la presse et les gens...il sembloit que tout le monde fût là mandé).

Although Diller suggests that Froissart, in a sense, ‘upstages royalty’ by imposing an image of his own choosing on the sequence of episodes, it seems unlikely to me that a writer as politically self-conscious as Froissart would venture into a direct and potentially controversial interpretation in this instance to present what Diller calls ‘signs of the king's inability to control public order’.27 During the entry, the king's men do, after all, manage to clear a way through the crowds, and the size of the crowd is, in itself, an indication of the king's and the queen's prestige. Furthermore, the disruption at the banquet has little to do with the ‘public’, and more to do with physical space and the effects of a very warm August night. Indeed, to a modern ear, there is almost a comic falling off in seriousness when the most dire effect of the overturning of the ladies' table is that they ‘had to get up hurriedly, without ceremony.’

What I would like to suggest instead, then, is a reading that takes into account Froissart's sense of genre, which, I would argue, was extremely acute. Having written, in his career, not only the prose and pastourelles that we have examined here, but also six types of fixed form lyrics, four long courtly love narratives, some short satirical autobiographical poems, and an Arthurian verse romance, Froissart was able to range effortlessly all the way from elaborate fantasy or complex allegory to hard reality, and, as recent literary critics have discovered, he was at his best when negotiating the difficult shifting ground in between.28 If, in Froissart's world view, it was the role of the aristocracy to strive for the ideal, then a text describing aristocratie endeavors might serve in one case to envision that ideal, in another to congratulate its practitioners when the ideal was achieved, and in still another to analyze or intellectualize an effort that, in the real world, must be both difficult and ultimately unachievable. In the entry pastourelle, the poet has a pleasant opportunity to congratulate his audience without making any particular effort to tell the literal truth; the genre, after all, is built upon an oversimplified contrast between classes, where shepherds are straightforward and honest, and always wonderfully impressed by the beauty and spectacle produced by the nobility. The fiction of perfection here is one that encourages the upper class to keep striving for reputation and, one might add, to be exemplary in their generosity and their bravery as they fulfill their obligation to protect those in the lower classes.

A work such as the Chroniques, on the other hand, cannot assume any fiction of perfection at all, but rather must build, through dramatic tension and repetition, a convincing case for the value and integrity of a style of life that is losing ground in a changing world. A large part of this value - and the very sense of being noble - is in the risks that members of the ruling class are constantly required to face. The crowds enthusiasm for spectacle in the streets is not satisfied without some inconvenience and danger to the aristocrats whose job it is to produce it; the grand and technologically

complex entertainments at dinner - part of an obligatory lifestyle of elevated tastes and understanding - cannot be achieved without an effort that would be incomprehensible to either the shepherds of the pastourelles or the bourgeois citizens who prove their power through redundant gifts of gold and silver. Such a lesson is not presented through allegory or fantasy, but rather through a sequencing of episodes that demonstrate not only the grandeur of aristocratie life, but its rhythms of effort, risk, loss, and achievement.

Froissart's readers surely understood the limitations of the pastourelle fiction, just as they would have understood that the chronicle account of the imperfect experience of the royal entry was not a revelation of weakness or a suggestion of overreaching, but a realistic reckoning of the difficulty they were required, by class, to withstand. As a chronicler attempting to lend support to a social order built on the premise that those in power must strive against imperfect nature, Froissart would have been remiss in leaving out the moments of challenge and failure, and that he presents these moments without commentary suggests that he depended on his audience to understand the mixed images of this genre as surely as they had understood the fictionalized simplicity of the pastourelle.

Samenvatting

De toon en opzet van de historische teksten van Jean Froissart worden beter begrepen indien men vergelijkt hoe hij eenzelfde verhaal uitwerkt in zijn prozakronieken en in zijn historische gedichten. In de pastourelle-versie van de intocht in Parijs van de Franse koningin Isabella van Beieren (1389) wordt via een voorspelbare strofevorm en met stereotiepe personages de nadruk gelegd op het feestelijke karakter van de intocht, terwijl het aanmerkelijk gedetailleerder verslag in zijn kroniek de lezers herinnert aan de uitdagingen van adellijke verantwoordelijkheid via een complex samenspel van inspanning, risico, verlies en succes. Toenmalige lezers zullen geen moeite hebben gehad met de afwijkende versies. Net als Froissart zelf, waren ze gewend zich bij de interpretatie te laten sturen door formele aanwijzingen.

 

Address of the author:

Kent State University Salem

2491 State Route 45 South

Salem, Ohio 44460 usa

figg@salem.kent.edu

Works Cited

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Ainsworth, Peter F., & Albert Varvaro (eds.), Jean Froissart, Chroniques. Livres III-IV. Paris: Livre de Poche, 2004.
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Calin, William. ‘Narrative Technique in Fournteenth-Century France. Froissart and his “Chroniques”’, in: Rupert Pickens (ed.), Studies in Honor of Hans-Erich Keiler. Medieval French and Occitan Literature and Romance Linguistics. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications, 1993, 227-236.
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Diller, George T. (ed.), Chroniques. Livre I. Le manuscrit d'Amiens. Bibliothèque municipale no 486. Genève: Droz, 1991-1993, 4 vols., Textes littéraires français, 407, 415, 424, 429.
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