f “Le clerc, le poète et le fou: de quelques discours possibles sur Narcisse à la fin du Moyen Age”

This article deals with some examples of the contrasting ways in which the Narcissus myth is reconsidered in the later Middle Ages. Evrart de Conty, in his Livre des Echecs amoureux moralisés, raises different interpretations from the case of Narcissos case, according to the integumentum doctrine and to an encyclopaedic manner. He (a physician) tends towards a rationalistic judgment about love. Froissart, in Le joli buisson de jeunesse, thoroughly transforms the myth: he presents Narcissus as a perfect courteous lover, who died of grief caused by the premature death of his beloved Echo. This "Ovidian" invention, not the only one in Froissart's literary work, is deliberate; it tends, in a playful way, to make Narcissus an inverted double of the poem's narrator. The anonymous Istoire de Narcisus et de Echo carries the Narcissus myth onto the stage and definitely chooses a ludicrous tone, thanks to the Fool who comments on the action. Narcissus is presented as the male counterpart of the famous "Belle dame sans merci" imagined by Alain Chartier in 1424. These three versions of the Narcissus myth are typical of the later Middle Ages as a period of critical reassessment of its literary heritage, and raise a crucial question about the ambiguity of signs.