| In his incomplete late-fourteenth-century narrative poem, La Fiction du lyon, Eustache Deschamps tells the story of a prosperous kingdom ruled by a wise and mighty lion, but brought down by the covetousness of its animal subjects, and the machinations of a rival ruler, the leopard. The text has been read as a political allegory referring to events of the conflict known as the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453). Eustache Deschamps, a prolific poet who also held royal offices throughout his life, turns his keen and critical eye on the faults and weaknesses of his contemporaries that threaten the very foundations of medieval society.;The present work seeks to uncover the complex and multiple literary, social and political meanings conveyed by Deschamps's animal allegory, by taking into account the poet's many sources: bestiaries, fables, the sprawling animal satire the Roman de Renart, heraldry, but also law, history and the late-fourteenth-century political events themselves. Despite renewed interest in Eustache Deschamps studies over the past 15 years, La Fiction du lyon had been very little explored. The present work attempts to fill this gap, and contributes to the understanding of the specificity of allegory in the late Middle Ages, as well as the involvement of lay poets in reflections on kingship and secular power. |
