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Le monde vivant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 September 2012

Rouben C. Cholakian
Affiliation:
Hamilton College
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Summary

Ne m'en racontez plus, mes yeulx,

De beaulté que vous prizez tant,

Car plus voys ou monde vivant

Et mains me plaist, ainsi m'aist Dieux (R 216).

Posing the Problem

Is the invented narrator in Charles of Orleans's poetry a split personality? Are there two distinct poetic personae, the persona of the captivity years, introspective and forlorn, and a second post-captivity persona, more confidant, more happily attuned to the world around him? In short, is Charles in 1440 suddenly transformed into an active viewer of and participant in le monde vivant? Such would appear to be the consensus among critics to date:

The first stage tends to portray the interior world, the poet striving to capture the immediacy of his mental and emotional experience. With the second stage another dimension is added to his work, namely, the perception of the natural and human world surrounding him and a new perspective of himself as a part of this world.

In the following pages I propose to compare the ballades composed during Charles's capitivity years in England (1415–1440) with the more than 300 rondeaux written after his return to Blois. In doing so, I will ask whether the poet's attitudes towards his surroundings changed significantly.

Feeling is Seeing: Prosopopeia

By the fifteenth century the endlessly repetitive courtly romance had become a kind of allegorical shorthand for love. There was no longer any need to tell the entire story; it was already known well enough.

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Publisher: Boydell & Brewer
Print publication year: 2000

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