De la chronique au roman courtois

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to question the relevance of the notion of genre at the end of the Middle Ages. I will do so through an analysis of Chapter 78 of Gutierre Díaz de Games’s Victorial (1436), the first biography of a knight written in Castilian. I shall study in particular what distinguishes the chapter from the rest of the treatise. The chapter – about five pages– is situated at the core of the narrative of this Chronicle which the author calls a “treatise” and which is divided into three books, each corresponding to a period in the life of Pero Niño. The chapter itself contains the description of an idyllic place, protected and enclosed, a place where knights and gentlewomen indulge in courtly pleasures. The chapter, the structureof which follows the divisions of the day according to courtly ritual, can be considered as a succession of tableaux evoking the five senses. It also reveals a double trend of the culture of educated noblemen, whether French or Castilian: profane, on the one hand, nourished with literary and artistic references, mostly drawn from Antiquity; religious, on the other hand, with a didactic aim. I posit that these pages contribute to courtly aesthetics, tempered however by Christian morality. This in turn is reinforced by the aim of the work which is to praise the knight, this being a prerequisite of the genre to which the Victorial belongs.

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