It does not seem paradoxical to me to affirm that the Bestiaire d'Amour by Richard de Fournival is a little-known work, and on which one has generally made only judgments that are all the more peremptory because they were superficial and ill-founded. The preface of Cesare Segre to his edition of the Bestiaire d'Amour still constitutes the only informed approach to the work, and despite its richness, one cannot consider that it has exhausted all critical perspectives. The commentaries generally situate the Bestiary quite clearly in relation to its upstream and downstream in the thread of literary history, but without characterizing otherwise its role as a hinge, and the transmutation that it subjected to the themes and images of courtly lyricism, to the metaphors of the traditional bestiary, before transmitting them to its epigones of the Dit de la Panthere d'Amour or the Fiore di Virtu: it is probably not enough to posit that the Bestiaire d'Amour systematized the emblematic use of animals in the illustration of amorous rhetoric to define the originality of Richart de Fournival's writing style, and the author's contribution to the literature of his time - [Author]

Language: French