Béthune, François. “Les écoles historiques de Saint-Denis et Saint-Germain-des-Prés dans leurs
rapports avec la composition des Grandes chroniques de France.” Revue d’histoire
ecclésiastique 4(1903):24–38, 207–30.
Spiegel, Gabrielle M. The Chronicle Tradition of Saint-Denis:A Survey. Brookline: Classical Folia,
1978.
GRANDS RHÉTORIQUEURS
. The term “Grands Rhétoriqueurs” is a misnomer, originally used to designate “minor”
poets who wrote between Villon and Clément Marot. It has now been more narrowly and
fruitfully applied to three closely linked generations of poets from the several duchies and
royal territories whose verses appeared between 1470 and 1520, many of whom
addressed their works to the others. As a group, they are an important and often neglected
link between medieval and Renaissance culture, and their poems reveal important
continuity in rhetorical education between the 15th and 16th centuries. They are distinct
in their techniques and attitudes from many of their contemporaries.
The list of Grands Rhétoriqueurs has been most recently revised by Paul Zumthor to
include the anonymous author of the Abuzé en court, Jean Meschinot, Henri Baude, Jean
Molinet, Jean Robertet, the anonymous author of the Lyon couronné, André de la Vigne,
Octavien de Saint-Gelays, Guillaume Crétin, Jean Lemaire de Belges, Jean Bouchet,
Destrées, Pierre Gringore, and Jean Marot, of whom the most important are Meschinot,
Molinet, Crétin, Lemaire, and Marot.
Artifice is the most obvious feature of these authors’ works, and their major difficulty.
Favorite techniques include alliteration, annominatio, amplificatio, anaphora, and puns.
(For example, every one of the thirty-five lines in a ballade by Meschinot begins with
plus.) Given the politically subordinate positions of most of these poets at court, they
were forced to rely on frozen, ritualized, highly oratorical forms that highlight figures of
speech and wordplay. Most works seem written for a ducal court and are openly
moralizing and didactic. Favored genres include the doctrinal, débat, epistle in prose, and
ballade and rondeau in verse. Their works frequently rely on praise, ornament, and
hyperbole and are replete with allegorical figures borrowed from the Roman de la Rose.
This situation was guaranteed, as Zumthor has shown, to alienate the writer from his
subject, so that the playfulness of the works often masks an attempt to “repersonalize” the
writer’s relationship to writing. Yet beneath this brittle and gilded surface, one finds
some stunningly “original” compositions that go far beyond courtly games.
In one ballade, Meschinot presents a dialogue between France and Louis XI, in which
the following exchange takes place after France identifies herself as “La destruicte
France./—Par qui?—Par vous.” Tiring of France’s reproaches, the king urges her three
times to speak more beautifully: “Parle plus beau,” to which he must, again three times,
hear the same answer, “Je ne puis, bonnement.” This skillful use of a refrain can hardly
be construed as art for art’s sake. The opening of Molinet’s Ressource du petit peuple
(1481–82), from his Faictz et dictz, is another striking example of highly rhetorical,
moralizing social commentary. Molinet describes the appearance of the fille de perdicion,
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