Le Lai de Franchise d'Eustache Deschamps ou de l'autre côté du miroir
Résumé
In the Lai de Franchise, Eustache Deschamps, a poet who lived during the reign of the early Valois, repudiates the poetic presuppositions governing a courtly existence at a loss for standards. Courtly inspiration linked to an ideal and political denunciation are merged in a poetic background. The lyrical subject “I”, heir to a tradition, the memory of which it celebrates, is the intradiegetic eyewitness of clerical disintegration and journeys toward the generating framework of a new type of governance. This is revealed to him a contrario through mirrors, a droplet of dew and a flower, the reflections of which are powerless tools for reform. By means of satire, he departs from the courtly and, by so doing, clerical arena to re-discover an art of living and writing that corresponds to the elementary dimension commended by his entire body of work.
Le Lai de Franchise d’Eustache Morel, dit Deschamps participe d’une veine littéraire qui réinvestit d’une intention morale les conventions poétiques issues de la courtoisie lyrique. Le propos est généralisant, il ne concerne pas un « je » particulier mais un groupe identifié et élu par le fait de sa proximité avec l’auteur et par celui de son statut modélisant : la cour de France. Le dessein particulier du Lai de Franchise dépasse le simple divertissement ou le jeu de cour car le fond argumentatif le destine à instruire un auditoire curial, princier, voire royal. Ce faisant, le texte disqualifie le discours amoureux au profit de la morale politique.