‹Le Temple de Bocace› de George Chastelain ou l’autorité problématique de l’historiographe

Abstract

Seen as a continuation of Boccaccio’s ‹De Casibus virorum illustrium›, ‹The Temple of Bocaccio› was written by George Chastelain between 1463 and 1465 to console the Queen of England, Margaret of Anjou, who had been exiled to Burgundy following the deposition of her husband, Henry VI, in 1461 and the accession to the throne of Edward IV. In this treaty, George Chastelain’s authority appears problematic in the face of Marguerite d’Anjou’s power and the prestige of his predecessor, whom he intends to praise. The effacement of the author’s ‹I› in the form of his passivity –the treatise is the result of a vision received between waking and sleeping– can be explained by his desire to speak under cover, in order to freely address a political and moral lesson to the queen and the great men of this world. The author thus succeeds in asserting his own authority in three ways: by inventing the dream setting, in which a voice invests him with the mission of continuator; by creating the metaphor of the temple; and finally by promoting the glory of the writer, capable of eclipsing that of the illustrious unfortunates whose fate he has recounted.