Bouhot, Jean-Paul. Ratramne de Corbie: histoire littéraire et controverses doctrinales. Paris:
Études Augustiniennes, 1976.
Delhaye, Philippe. Une controverse sur l’âme au IXe siècle. Namur: Centre d’Études Médiévales,
1950.
REALISTIC ROMANCES
. Term that designates disparate verse romances that, from the late 12th to the late 13th
century, shunned the fantastic, lingered on the depiction of everyday realia, and made
reference to contemporary persons or situations. They are not, however, “realistic” in the
modern sense. No author claimed, like Stendhal, “to hold a mirror to reality”—a notion
foreign to a literature that had no preoccupation with mimesis.
Gautier d’Arras, no doubt to set himself apart from his rival Chrétien de Troyes, as
well as from Marie de France, whose work inspired him, claimed that his romance Ille et
Galeron had no “phantoms” or “lies,” by contrast with the lais, which gave their audience
the impression of having slept or dreamed (ll. 931–36). Several years later, Jean Renart,
the first of the “realistic” writers of the 13th century, expressed himself in similar terms
in the prologue to Escoufle: his heart, he says, cannot accept many stories he has heard,
because his reason prevents it; lies ought not to prevail over truth in a tale (ll. 12–23).
Jean’s reflections on the art of romance are headed confusedly toward what a later age
will call “verisimilitude.”
In fact, the “realistic romances” are each more improbable than the other, though they
do avoid the Arthurian world and the supernatural. Forgoing the Breton love of the
fantastic appears sufficient in their eyes to satisfy reason. Yet if their plots, which often
develop folklore motifs, do not seek verisimilitude, they nonetheless seek some
foundation in everyday reality. They offer their aristocratic public a reflection of courtly
life, sympathetic but also faithful, sometimes detailed and precise. They are concerned
with geographical setting and occasionally evoke contemporary people or events. In
Guillaume de Dole, Jean Renart uses several of his contemporaries as characters,
although the romance is set in the distant past. The procedure’s lack of verisimilitude,
almost ostentatious, but nonetheless dependent on the “real,” invites us to question not
only the sort of acceptance medieval romances required of their readers but, more
generally, the value of anachronism. The projection of the present onto the past is often
deliberate.
To Jean Renart are attributed two romances, Escoufle (ca. 1200–02) and the Roman de
la Rose (ca. 1210–12 or ca. 1228), today called Guillaume de Dole to distinguish it from
the more illustrious romance of that name, as well as the Lai de l’ombre (ca. 1221–22).
Born in Dammartin-en-Goële and undoubtedly a clerc, Jean spent most of his life in the
courts in the northern part of the Francophone region and seems to have been linked to
the French-speaking Guelf milieu, as John Baldwin has shown. He dedicated Escoufle to
Count Baudouin VI of Hainaut, future emperor of Constantinople, and Guillaume de
Dole to Milon de Nanteuil, bishop of Beauvais. Guillaume evokes numerous people
connected with the principality of Liège and the entourage of Archbishop Hugues de
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