| Titre | Wod et wude dans la littérature médiévale anglaise ou l'espace de la folie | |
|---|---|---|
| Auteur | Marie-Françoise Alamichel | |
 |
Revue | Le Moyen Age |
| Numéro | tome 113, no 2, 2007 | |
| Page | 361-382 | |
| Résumé anglais |
Wod and wude in medieval English literature or the geography of
Madness.
Lunatics are not familiar figures in English medieval works. In particular, they hardly
play any role in Old English literature. (...) Before the introduction of romance, in the
12th century, the few examples of lunatics are Biblical heroes or those considered as
possessed by the Devil (sick people, sinners, or pagans). On the other hand, Lives
of Saints present men and women madly in love with God, hermits withdrawn into
deserts, and fascinating mystics while in epics madness is associated with anger:
infuriated warriors fight on the battlefield. In the 14th and 15th centuries, with romance
now a well-established genre, knights are often shown as temporarily unsound.
Mental disorder is then a (necessary?) stage in their inner development: deeply
bewildered, they separate themselves from society and find refuge in the forest; in
romances, the madman is a wild man. Quite different is the urban fool, the court jester,
whose (pretended) madness reveals concealed wisdom. The king's fool appeared in
medieval works but had his hour of glory, later on, in Elizabethan drama. Lunatics,
fools, all those beside themselves, though not totally absent from English medieval
texts, remain, throughout the period, in the background. Source : Éditeur (via Cairn.info) |
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| Article en ligne | http://www.cairn.info/article.php?ID_ARTICLE=RMA_132_0361 |
