Jean Lemaire de Belges's Rhetorical Masks in L’Amant Vert and “Les Regretz de la Dame Infortunée”

Abstract

A prominent feature of the poetry of Franco-Burgundian poet and rhetorician Jean Lemaire de Belges (1473–1524) is his use of a rhetorical mask—a persona—through which to proffer his utterances and assert his identity. Because the early sixteenth-century court poet's financially and politically subservient position vis-à-vis powerful aristocratic patrons demands an encomiastic rhetoric that leaves little room for the poet's self-assertion within the body of the poetic text, Lemaire must employ the indirect means of a narrative mask to assert his own existence and concerns. This article examines first the narrative mask of the parrot-lover in the 1505 Epîtres de l’Amant Vert, through which Lemaire is able to voice concerns about his precarious position as a writer almost entirely at the mercy of his patron's good health and good will. A discussion of “Les Regretz de la Dame Infortunée” (1506) follows, in which Lemaire takes an intriguing narratological stance that unites his voice to that of his patroness, Margaret of Austria (1480–1530), ultimately forging an authorial je that speaks for both poet and patron. This nearly mystical union of narrative voices allows Lemaire to express his own concerns about the volatility of the patronage system while concomitantly giving voice to Margaret's mourning at the death of her brother, Philip the Handsome (1478–1506).

Keywords:

• Amant Vert
• Jean Lemaire de Belges
• patronage
• poetry
• rhetoriqueurs

Notes

This poem indeed constitutes a moment of rare humor in Lemaire's writings, for as he would point out himself in his 1514 Des pompes funèbres antiques et modernes, difficult circumstances had often necessitated more serious subjects for his compositions: “Tu scez et vois que papier je ne dore/Ny embelliz, de riens dont on puist rire,/Ains sans cesser ay matiere d’escripre/Les faictz dolentz de mort qui tout devore” (53, lines 7–10).

For more on the identification of the parrot-narrator with the poet Jean Lemaire de Belges, see François Rigolot, Le Texte de la Renaissance: des rhétoriqueurs à Montaigne (59–104).

The main subject of L’Amant Vert—a parrot—may itself have served a symbolically consolatory purpose for Margaret, however. After the death of her mother, three-year-old Margaret had taken her mother's parrot with her to the French court at Amboise to bring comfort during a time of affliction (see Legaré 204)

All references to the L’Amant Vert are from the Jean Frappier edition (Lemaire, Les épîtres de l’amant vert).

See Women of Distinction (118).

An alternate popular medieval explanation holds that the pelican mother, having accidentally killed her young, brings them back to life by sprinkling her own blood over their dead bodies. The highly popular medieval Physiologus likewise links the power of this blood to the atoning power of Christ's blood (see Physiologus 9–10).

We recall, for example, Jean Robertet's late fifteenth-century “L’exposition des couleurs”: “Vert/A l’esmeraulde ressemble precieuse,/Me delectant en parfaicte verdeur;/Mal seant suis avec noire couleur/Et n’appartiens qu’à personne joyeuse” (Robertet 138–40). Note the incompatibility of black and green in Robertet's lines, reflected also in lines 61–85 of Lemaire's “Première Épître de l’Amant Vert.” Molinet had similarly remarked on the incompatibility of the color green with tragic happenings: “Tremble, terre, de joly verd couverte,/Soies ouverte et monstre tes dolours,/Porte le noir en place descouverte,/Car couleur verte est contre ta desserte” (Dupire ed., v. 1, 39, lines 41–44).

We know that Lemaire's first epistle became popular among the courts of western Europe, particularly among aristocratic women; Anne of Brittany is rumored to have committed the parrot's epitaph to memory (see Frappier's “Introduction” to Les épîtres xvi). Margaret of Austria also became delighted with the work, specifically requesting of Lemaire, in verse of her own, a sequel (Les épîtres 51, note 43).

See Eubanks (313–21).

All references to the “Regretz” come from the Pierre Jodogne edition.

Frappier has suggested that Lemaire emphasizes Margaret rather than Philibert the Handsome in the “Couronne Margaritique” partially because “le compte des vertus de Philibert le Beau était assez vite fait” and Lemaire “se tira de difficulté en prolongeant l’éloge du mort par celui de la veuve” (“Introduction,” La Concorde xiii).

Similarly, the very title of Lemaire's “Couronne Margaritique” places the emphasis on Margaret rather than on her deceased husband. While it should be noted that one manuscript at the University of Turin (MS M, IV, 26) gives as the title to this work Le Roman de Philibert le Beau, the content of the work makes clear that it concerns itself more with the praising and consoling of Margaret than with a true lamenting of Philibert's death.

See Œuvres, Ed. Stecher (193, footnote 1).

Lemaire habitually signs his poems with his own devise, De Peu Assez; thus his departure from usual practice seems particularly striking in this instance.

See “at one,” “atone,” and “atonement,” Oxford English Dictionary.

Incidentally, Margaret's magnificent library at Mechelen (Malines), one of the greatest courtly libraries of her day, contained no less than three copies of the Imitatio Christi (see Women of Distinction 236).