LE « DON DU COEUR » ET SES MÉTAMORPHOSES. DU PARADIGME COURTOIS À L’ICONOGRAPHIE MÉDIÉVALE
THE “GIFT OF THE HEART” AND ITS METAMORPHOSES. OF THE PARADIGM COURTEOUS TO MEDIEVAL ICONOGRAPHY

Summary/Abstract: Story in verses of Picardy origin, preserved in two manuscripts from the 14th century, Le Roman du Castelain de Couci et de la Dame de Fayel is part of a larger corpus of texts centered around an adulterous relationship that a jealous husband cruelly chastises by a cardiophage meal. However, if the Franco-Provençal corpus consists of several brief narratives dating from the 13th century, prior to the novel (The Lai of Ignaure, the vidas and the razós of the troubadour Guillem de Cabestany), only the novel, which also proposes the courteous version of this story, presents the love tokens exchange between the lovers. Our analysis will focus initially on these gifts and their symbolical functions: the letters exchanged by the lovers, literary objects valued in courteous literature in the 12th-13th centuries, as well as a sleeve and braids that the lady offers to the knight before his departure in106crusade; finally, a coffer sent by the latter to his lady, which contains a letter and the lover’s heart, extracted just after his death by the valet. In the second part of our study, we have emphasized the influence of this literary motif on medieval sensitivities, given the success that it enjoyed in medieval iconography until the 15th century. Indeed, in the area of diffusion of this novel - namely the North and East of the Kingdom of France, Flanders, as well as the Parisian region and the Rhine Valley - the gift of the heart was represented in particular on objects such as mirrors in ivory or the caskets, objects clearly connected to the feminine universe, but also on the tapestry.

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