RIRE ET CONTER AUX BAINS. AUTOUR DU MOTIF THERMAL DANS LE RÉCIT BREF EUROPÉEN À LA RENAISSANCE (ITALIE, FRANCE, EMPIRE GERMANIQUE)
LAUGH AND STORY AT THE BATHS. AROUND THE THERMAL PATTERN IN THE BRIEF EUROPEAN NARRATIVE OF THE RENAISSANCE (ITALY, FRANCE, GERMAN EMPIRE)

Summary/Abstract: I will question the recurrence of the thermal motif in Renaissance short narrative, thus showing how this motif illuminates and confirms the therapeutic place assigned to the short story and the facetious tale.I will bring together some medical writings and testimonies of thermal cures, which comment on the place of relaxatio animi in the thermal protocol, with collections of short stories which situate the storytelling activity in a thermal setting, the thermal cure: Novelle Porretane by Sabadino degli Arienti, Novella by Gentile Sermini, Facetiae by Heinrich Bebel and Heptaméron by Marguerite de Navarre. Through the cross-reading of fictional texts and testimonies given as authentic (such as the letter from the Baden baths by Poggio Bracciolini), my aim is to shed light on the Sitz im Leben of these collections, their “anchoring in the life of the time” and to show how the practice of storytelling during treatment, before becoming a topos, appears as a lived experience, which informs the writing and sometimes, triggers it.

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