Flamenca: Variations Sur Les Themes De L'amour Courtois. (French Text).

Abstract

This dissertation is an analysis of the main themes found in Flamenca, a thirteenth-century Provencal romance. In order to underst and and appreciate the uniqueness and the originality of this work, this study tries to show how the main ideas either agree with or differ from a corpus of other medieval works of the same period. Special attention is paid to the topics of "fin'amor" and jealousy. The first chapter examines the theme of courtly love. The codes of "fin'amor" and those of thirteenth-century society are studied against those of the fictional world of Flamenca. The second chapter investigates the classical and medieval sources of Flamenca and tries to account for their role in the creation of the author's own br and of eroticism. The third chapter analyzes the tragic role played by the "gilos" in Flamenca vis-a-vis four other thirteenth-century romances: Le Mort le Roi Artu, l'Histoire du Chatelain de Coucy et de la dame de Fayel, le Roman de Tristan de Thomas, et Joufroi de Poitiers. All these romances depict love threatened--not by outside obstacles as exemplified in the cansos of the troubadours, but rather by the internal torment of jealousy. The fourth chapter explores the use of the interior monologue by the authors of Flamenca, the Eneas, the Cliges, the Chevalier au Lion and Pyramus and Tisbe. The common "structure" as well as the "sequences" in the development of love and jealousy in the monologues is examined in detail in order to bring out the originality of the technique of the author of Flamenca. The last chapter deals with the technique of the author: the well defined setting for his tragi-comedy, the use of the spoken word, the well chosen details, the careful attention paid to time and space, all of the elements which contribute to making the Flamenca characters more human, more realistic to the point that they finally transcend the limits of the closed, conventional world of courtly love.