Barron, Caroline, and Du Boulay, F.R., eds. The Reign of Richard II. London: Athlone, 1971.
Goodman, Anthony. The Loyal Conspiracy: The Lords Appel-lant Under Richard II. London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1971.
Jones, Richard H. The Royal Policy of Richard II: Absolutism in the Later Middle Ages. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1968.
Mathew, Gervase. The Court of Richard II. London: Murray, 1968.
Palmer, John J.N. England, France and Christendom, 1377–1399. London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1972.
RICHARD DE FOURNIVAL
(1201-before 1260). Poet, canon, and chancellor at Amiens cathedral and canon of
Rouen, Richard de Fournival produced a rich and varied corpus, composing songs in the
trouvère style, the prose Bestiaire d’amours and its fragmentary verse redaction, and the
Latin Biblionomia, the catalogue of his remarkable library. Three other prose treatises,
the Commens d’amours, the Consaus d’amours, and the Poissance d’amours, are of
questionable attribution.
It is for the Bestiaire d’amours that Richard is chiefly known. In this adaptation of the
bestiary format, birds and animals represent aspects of the love experience. The text,
immediately popular, has been transmitted in numerous manuscripts, richly illuminated.
It inspired several literary responses, all anonymous. The earliest is the Response au
bestiaire, in which the lady to whom the Bestiaire d’amours was addressed supposedly
replies, turning each of the bestiary examples into an illustration of her need to take care
to protect herself against male sexual advances. A verse adaptation, different from the
fragmentary verse redaction apparently by Richard himself, also survives; although the
author gives his name, he does so in an anagram of such complexity that it remains
unsolved. In two 14th-century manuscripts, the Bestiaire d’amours is given a narrative
continuation, in which the lover captures the lady and receives from her a red rose. In
another 14th-century manuscript, the Bestiaire and its Response are embedded in a
sequence of prose texts that form a dialogue between lover and lady; although none is a
bestiary, all refer to the Bestiaire, which clearly inspired the sequence.
We know from the Biblionomia that Richard owned some unusual books, including
the only known complete copy of the poems of Tibullus. At his death, his library passed
to Gérard d’Abbeville and then to the Sorbonne.
Sylvia Huot
[See also: BESTIARY; LAPIDARY]
Fournival, Richard de. Le bestiaire d’amour rimé, ed. Arvid Thordstein. Lund: Ohlssons,
1941.[The anonymous verse adaptation of the Bestiaire d’amours.]
——. Li bestiaires d’amours di maistre Richart de Fornival e Li response du bestiaire, ed. Cesare
Segre. Milan: Riccardi, 1957.
——. Biblionomia, ed. Léopold Delisle. Cabinet des Manuscrits 2 (1874):520–35.
——. Richard de Fournival. l’œuvre lyrique de Richard de Fournival, ed. Yvan G.Lepage. Ottawa:
University of Ottawa Press, 1984.
The Encyclopedia 1507